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Turd Fergusen

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Worst. Birthday. Ever.

An Ohio boy had his school lunch taken away from him on his ninth birthday because he owed a debt, according to multiple reports.

Jefferson Sharpnack, a student at Green Primary School in Uniontown, had picked out a lunch of cheesy breadsticks to eat. But when he approached the register to check out, the lunch lady took his tray away from him without a word, replacing it with a slice of cheese and bread.

And it was all over a $9 debt the student allegedly owed to the cafeteria.

Jefferson had recently moved in with his grandmother, Diane Bailey, and was supposed to be enrolled in a free-and-reduced-lunch program, according to a report by News 5 Cleveland. While they were waiting for the paperwork to process, he came home with a note saying he owed $9 on his lunch account. So Bailey called the school to sort it out, believing he was in good standing.

Instead, the birthday boy had his lunch denied in front of the entire cafeteria.

“In my mind, he didn’t owe anything. I owed the money, the parents, the school district,” Bailey told News 5 Cleveland. “And my other question is, if they take the food off of your tray, they have to throw it away. You would take the food off a tray and you can’t reserve it? You’re going to throw it away and not feed

Full Story:
https://nypost.com/2019/09/11/ohio-boy-has-school-lunch-taken-away-over-9-debt/
 
What is the problem? He owed a debt, they took away the special food he wanted and couldn't pay for and
gave him a plain meal instead. He did not go hungry.
My issue, the guardian owed the debt. The hungry kid didn't. The way this reads to me is a dropped line of communication and in that case, you don't humiliate the kid, I remember 9, I would still be sobbing in a corner over something like this all these decades later. The feeling of how craptastic his 9th Birthday was might stick with the little guy for his lifetime. :(
 
My issue, the guardian owed the debt. The hungry kid didn't. The way this reads to me is a dropped line of communication and in that case, you don't humiliate the kid, I remember 9, I would still be sobbing in a corner over something like this all these decades later. The feeling of how craptastic his 9th Birthday was might stick with the little guy for his lifetime. :(

If he had to move in with his grandmother at age 9,, he probably already has worse trauma to cringe over in the decades to come. You know what he really needs here and probably doesn't have? A father to buck him up and encourage him to get over it with humor and manly fortitude. Prepare him for the 'long littleness of life'. "Son, life is full of little humiliations, but we can get over it because we have each other, now let's go outside and you can help me with something. "

And seriously, still sobbing in a corner? Time to toughen up.
 
And seriously, still sobbing in a corner? Time to toughen up.
That might have been a slight exaggeration, but my point was, I don't do humiliated/publicly shamed very well. It lingers. If I think about it, I still feel badly for puking on my nasty, vicious grade 6 (8th grade US) teacher after she forced me to eat elephant biltong (jerky) and only told me after I'd eaten it what it was. Bitch MORE than deserved it, but it still makes me feel mortified. Same woman had just humiliated me over the death of my father a few weeks earlier. She was NOT my favorite teacher! I'm just happy Mom waited until I was over 40 to convert to Catholicism, I'm the type that Catholic guilt would have been TOO effective on! :shame:

ETA: Correct the school grades. I was thinking '82, but it was '83
 
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I'm not sure I fully understand the school lunch programs (we don't have ones run by the school), but we do have "outside run" things like pizza days or sub days. If you can afford it and your kid wants it, you order and pay upfront. There's no pressure to get them and if you didn't order for your kid, you send in a regular lunch they would be eating just like any other day....but I don't think it was fair of them to take the child's lunch away, no matter if there was a debt on the account or not.

Wouldn't a more gentle approach be to have a teacher let the child know ahead of time (or have a pre-made/cold lunch) available to the child before they get to the cafeteria and go through the lunch line.
 
This breaks my heart.
Kids have enough going on with school.
Bullying
Shooters
Awful teachers
Peer pressure
Drugs

God even inmates get 3 squares ffs without a side order of humiliation.
 
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