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I pay thousands per year in school taxes and the vast majority goes to school administrators making 6 figures. We can’t just toss more money at schools to fix this - we need legislation stating how the money is used. The money needs to go to the kids and teachers instead of clueless rich people.
Vote in your local elections, join the PTA, tell your friends how fucked it is and ask them to vote. You can’t legislate yourself out of this as school boards regularly mismanage funds for decades.
Dude, read the room. We are in the era of the oligarch.
MOST money will go to the clueless rich who do not need it and we will continue to slide into french revolution levels of wealth gap.
That’s what happend at my highschool. There was a year we couldn’t even afford paper but we were a school of over 2000 kids. Not a wealthy area by any means, but with all those taxes from all those families you’d think basic supplies wouldn’t be an issue.
It wouldn’t have been an issue if one of the administrators wasn’t fucking stealing money from us… I don’t even mean they had too high of a salary, I mean they were literally stealing money…
I do remember lunch shaming happening to others in school. Kids are mean and don’t really understand class struggle.
In England we had it with school jumpers, poor kids had a cheap jumper with the logo sewn on, everyone else had an official jumper.
I was one of the three or so “poor” kids in my year, and it was quite embarrassing. Wasn’t even poor, my mum was just extremely stingy and wouldn’t pay for the proper jumper…
They understand alright, they’re just often intent on perpetuating it.
They absolutely do not. There is a big difference before junior high and post high school. Humans do need to learn and children are running on instinct and feelings until they do. Its a process and takes more time for some than others. Some never learn.,
In elementary school in the early 80s I was called poor (which I was) because I had to bring a box lunch in an old beat up lunchbox my mom got from a yard sale for a nickel, and could not afford cafeteria lunches. All my food was home made and the kids made fun of everything I brought. It got so bad I used to get in trouble all the time so I always had lunch detention and had to eat with my teacher.
yeah. we had a big family and there was competition for normal looking brown bags which I was not good at so mine was in the wonder bread bag. I would not say we were poor. We were poor for the rich suburb we lived in but it was a big working class family and my parents, rightly, prioritized getting a house, even the worst house, in a good school district and getting it paid off.
We did not have indoor toilets until I was in 6th or 7th grade, and the indoor shower came a year or so later.
at home or school? in the 80’s?
Home and yes
Some sure, for others I got the impression it was a crabs in a bucket kind of situation.
As a Canadian, I’m like:
You guys are getting food?
(School cafeterias with food service beyond selling terrible premade sandwiches for people who forgot their lunch are rare below college level and AFAIK what few exist all operate like a fast-food restaurant, where everyone pays for their meal then and there.)
In Russia, certain groups of kids (children of low-income parents, of families with 3+ kids, orphans) receive a special ticket, one per day, allowing them to have a school lunch for free.
Sometimes they share unused ones (tickets don’t have names on them), which practically guarantees there’s a bunch of kids on their side - everyone wants free lunch.
And generally it was more of a thing to flash, not something to be shamed for.
We are so not okay.
Does it look like we’re ok?
No we’re not OK
I remember in grade school my district had a system where everyone who bought anything at the cafeteria went through an internal “type in your ID to the pin pad” system. Internally, the computer would decide whether the student was charged against their account or if it did a discount/free. This was how they dealt with that.
This isn’t unique to America. It happens across Europe too.
When I was in school the less well-off kids got their lunch free. There was definitely no equivalent to a “marker” the linked article mentions, unless you include the lunch ticket. I was actually kind of jealous at the time, I didn’t understand why I had to pay when I didn’t bring my own lunch and they didn’t.
Singling out kids because their parents can’t afford food is kind of fucked up.
It’s been a while since I was in school, but my wife is a teacher here in the UK. The packed lunch area was often where the poor kids were, and we also had issues where (in their infinite wisdom) the school gave kids on free school meals a special card to get a specific meal (and nothing more). They may as well have stamped “bully me” on their foreheads.
Nowadays, schools are smart enough to use prepaid card systems where free school meals are preloaded on the same cards. My wife’s old school used to put the same restrictions, but now it’s far harder to determine who gets the free meals.
The packed lunch crowd does still get a lot of scrutiny, though, especially those that shop in “less favourable” stores. Buy your lunch from farmfoods and you’re asking to be picked on. It’s fucked up, and social media has made things SO much worse, but ultimately kids are often extremely cruel.
I’ve been across Europe. Gone to school in Ireland, The Netherlands, France, Sweden, and Denmark. I have NEVER seen this.
This definitely happens in France and the UK. I saw the latter first hand.
When has America ever been okay? It went from land of the free while enslaving people and restricting voting ability, to then freeing slaves but continuing to oppress entire groups to minimize their allowable impact on society, until they it became oppress people financially every way possible.
You skipped the genocide.
Also, slavery never ended in the US. It was only barred for people who haven’t been convicted of a crime
And share cropping has been made systematic by depressing wages so far people can’t afford to move, change jobs, train, etc…
Sure. Also forced sterilization. Using groups for experimentation without consent. Stealing land. Bombing entire islands so native people can no longer live there. On and on.
Red states are not okay, because all they have left in their value system is cruelty toward people they see as not “pulling their weight,” as if we still live in some resource-scarce era of yore where if you don’t work, you don’t eat (and even if you do work, eating is not guaranteed, better work harder!).
Blue states are increasingly providing lunches, and sometimes even breakfast, for all students free of charge. It used to be income-based (you’d get free or half-priced lunch based on your family’s income), but even that system is getting ditched because of the associated stigma and the problem of some needy students falling between the cracks.
I taught last year in a district near Dallas, TX where 70% of students were on a free or reduced lunch plan. This year, I am teaching in a district near Portland, OR where breakfast and lunch is free for every student, as it should be.
don’t forget the red state genius idea of “why pay janitors when we can make the kids clean up each others’ puke? then they’ll think it’s great when they start getting paid $7/hr for manual labor at 14”
Minnesota and governor Tim Walz for the win.
Minnesota is probably the most famous example at the moment, but they’re far from alone!
https://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/states-with-universal-free-school-meals-so-far-update/
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Hol’ up, that sounds like communism.
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“Compassion” and “humanity”. What’s that? More communism?
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(my posts were being ironic, sorry if you thought i was being sincere)
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Not only are we not OK, we need your help. Please issue sanctions until we stop funding genocides and torturing folks
No. We are not OK. Thanks for asking.
From Texas. When I was in elementary school circa 2000, we had a running balance that our parents could contribute to via written checks.
My parents were going through a divorce back then, and in the pinging back and forth between my parents houses, it always gave me so much anxiety buying lunch at school. You wouldn’t know if your account could cover what you picked up in the lunch line until you got to the cashier at the end. AND if it couldn’t, they would literally take all of the food you put on your tray and give you a PB&J sandwich.
Having elementary school kids keep up with their balances was tough, and even when I did remember, if I were with my dad, he would refuse to give lunch money to my sister and me because “that’s what child support is for.”
It just sucked all around and made me feel like the smallest human on earth. And I know that this experience here was not unique to me.
Sounds like a real class act. I bet he still doesn’t know why he couldn’t make his marriage work.
america are you ok?
It’s OK, we’re dealing with this by repealing our child labor laws, so kids can work at the meat processing plant instead of some immigrant. Two birds, one stone.
Brought to you by luxury lectern spender (at taxpayer’s expense!) and Weird 34 sycophant Gov. Sarah Sanders of Arkansas.
