Education Needed!

Off the top of my head, I can't remember the exact process by which I paid for school lunches as a child. It seems like in junior high we brought our own money but I don't really recall the process during elementary school.

A lot of schools today use an account system in which parents are billed for the lunches their children eat, either in full or in part depending on whether or not they qualify for the free or reduced federal lunch program. This can mean late payments every now and again, either because the parental pay cycle doesn't match well with the lunchroom billing cycle, because it slipped someone's mind or because the parents are slackers. So now and again we get stories about how students have to eat a very basic meal instead of the regular one because their accounts are in arrears. Or about lunchroom personnel who may (or may not) risk their jobs to feed students who've been listed as delinquent.

And then there is the cabal of Einsteins in charge of the Wyoming Valley West School District in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. They recently created a form letter to be sent to the unpaid accounts, in which the district officials say the parents could be taken to "delinquency court" if they do not pay their balances and the outcome of those proceedings could include removal of the children from the family home into the foster care system.

This came as news to Joanne Van Saun, Luzerne County Children and Youth Services executive director, for the very simple reason that the county DOESN'T EVER DO THAT. The agency does not, never has and apparently never will remove a child from a home because of unpaid bills. No one contacted the Luzerne County Sheriff's Office to see if they have a debtor's prison, but that seems to be because the officials of Luzerne County -- unlike the officials of the Wyoming Valley West School District -- live in the 21st flippin' century.

In another story, we read that the district considered serving the more basic meal to students whose parents hadn't paid, but received legal advice against that move. I am not certain what chain of reasoning cautioned against a PB&J entrée while recommending an unenforceable fictional threat, but I hope the Wyoming Valley West School District did not pay money for it.

The worst part about this mess -- for me, anyway, because I don't pay taxes in the Wyoming Valley West School District and thus am not getting tapped to fund the brain trust that came up with this letter -- is the horrible injustice done to the concept of foster care. Despite what the savants of the district would have you believe, foster care is not meant to punish parents. It is meant to rescue children from dangerous or potentially dangerous home situations. Whether or not the average person on the street understands it that way is not really that big of a deal, but you would hope officials in a public school system would get it, seeing as how they also deal with children. Perhaps Luzerne County should give some thought to removing kids from Wyoming Valley West schools and placing them in an alternative school system.

Part of me would like to see someone decide to send the letter back to the district with a big ol' Molon labe written on top. That would force it to spend money on court filings and attorney fees only to have some crusty old judge to bang a gavel on their heads and make them write 1,000 times, "I will not abuse the power of the state in order to make my life easier." But that would be the kind of action which would use the children as props or tools in a struggle between adults and if school district officials can't see how wrong that is, then the parents are going to have to instead.