School Lunch

I read a story in the NY Times today that outraged me about as much as the story a week or so ago about female prisoners being denied sanitary pads and tampons. Today's outrage story dealt with kids being denied hot school lunches because their lunch accounts are in arrears. I don't have kids and I'm not exactly a fan of many of them, but that doesn't mean I want to see kids go hungry. Denying a school kid a hot lunch because their parents owe money isn't right. I read about grade school kids having their hot lunch taken away and thrown in the garbage while a cheese sandwich was shoved on their food tray instead. I suspect most grade school kids and many high school kids don't control their own funds and have no way of controlling the funds set aside for their school lunch. Yet these kids are forced to be publicly humiliated and chow down on a dry cheese sandwich because their school lunch accounts need money added. It's humiliating enough to have to get a school lunch, I'm sure, especially one partially or fully subsidized by the government. But to have your meal yanked away from you and, in some cases, thrown in the garbage over a few dollars is ridiculous. For some low-income kids, a school lunch is the only meal or the only decent meal they eat during the day. It's a shame that children are treated so poorly in a country as wealthy as ours is.