Utah Lunch Nazis Seize Food From Humiliated School Children!

Utah Lunch Nazis Seize Food From Humiliated School Children! (Video)

In Hot News, What the hell? January 30, 2014 , 12:34 PM

 

 

But this is no joke.  Or a clip from a sitcom. Dozens of children at Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City watched as school workers picked up their meals and dumped them in the trash.

Why? 
Because the children did not have enough money in their accounts, according to a story reported by the Salt Lake City Tribune, leaving parents outraged.

“She took my lunch away and said, ‘Go get a milk,’” Sophia Isom, a fifth-grader at Salt Lake City’s Uintah Elementary School, told NBC affiliate KSL.com. “I came back and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ Then she handed me an orange. She said, ‘You don’t have any money in your account so you can’t get lunch.’” Isom’s mom Erica Lukes called the move “traumatic and humiliating” and told the Salt Lake Tribune she was all paid up. “I think it’s despicable,” she said. “These are young children that shouldn’t be punished or humiliated for something the parents obviously need to clear up. Lukes said it was a difficult day for her daughter and other children. She said Sophia told her she witnessed one of the cafeteria workers crying at the sight.

“You would think in a public school system your child wouldn’t be turned away from lunch,” Lukes said, “especially when people usually settle their balances.”

Jason Olsen, a Salt Lake City District spokesman, said the district’s child-nutrition department became aware that Uintah had a large number of students who owed money for lunches. As a result, the child-nutrition manager visited the school and decided to withhold lunches in an attempt to “deal with the issue”. The children’s meals were thrown away and wasted because “once food is served to one student it can’t be served to another”.

 

“Something’s not working, and that’s what the school and child-nutrition department are going to work on together,” Olsen said.

Olsen said school officials told the district that their staffers typically tell students about any balances as they go through the lunch line and send home notifications to parents each week. Olsen claims that the district attempted to contact parents with balances but weren’t able to reach them all. The child-nutrition manager then decided to take away the students’ lunches.  But Olsen said he would not describe the tactic as a mistake.

“If students were humiliated and upset,” Olsen said, “that’s very unfortunate and not what we wanted to happen.”

 Olsen has since issued a too little too late apology on the district’s Facebook page.