School Lunches: A Cheesy Solution

What happens when kids whose parents are supposed to pay for some or all of their school lunches fail to pick up the tab? Increasingly school districts around the country have begun serving these children cheese sandwiches instead of regular hot meals. Although critics have objected to this policy because it singles out and embarrasses kids whose parents can't afford to pay, others have lauded this attempt to enforce parental responsibility.

The kids in these programs aren't those whose family finances qualify them for free lunches; such children aren't affected by this new policy. Rather, they're kids who either are or aren't eligible for reduced-price lunches but whose parents haven't paid their bills.

A recent news story suggested that the alternative lunches—"a cold cheese sandwich, fruit and a carton of milk"—don't "seem like much of a meal." But many kids, in public and private schools alike, whose parents either can't afford school lunches or do without them out of frugality, bring similar lunches to school every day. These lunches, especially if they include a vegetable or two, are nutritionally just as good as, if not better than, the frequently overcooked, too salty, and fat-laden hot lunches schools provide.

So what's at issue here isn't really nutrition. Instead, it's the humiliation, or "punishment," kids suffer because of their parents' actions. Although the districts' cheese-sandwich solution provides a less expensive, nutritionally adequate lunch to students from nonpaying families, it's a poor one from the standpoint of children's overall well-being at school.

A better idea might simply be to stop providing lunches altogether unless they're either fully paid for or slated for free lunch–program students. This strategy would help solve the schools' budgetary problems without compromising the emotional health of students. Plenty of kids at even the most expensive private schools bring their own lunches, whether for dietary reasons or because their parents can't (or don't want to) pay what can easily amount to an extra $100-plus per month.

And if nonpaying parents then fail to provide inexpensive sack lunches for their kids out of negligence, that's a whole different issue—and one that schools shouldn't be expected to resolve.

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