I can almost guarantee that this story is going to aggravate you in a major way. And if this video would not have gone viral, would the public have even known about it?
Kids need food for energy (and, you know, surviving) and they need energy to learn on a daily basis (duh). It seems simple enough, but a high school in Minnesota recently came under fire for throwing away hot meals of over 40 students who had lunch debt at the school.
Richfield High School in Minnesota was the focus of the backlash after a video went viral of cafeteria workers actually removing food from the trays of students who had outstanding lunch debts of $15 or more. Not only is that sad and inappropriate, it’s also humiliating for the kids to experience this in front of their peers.
The backlash on social media was quick and it was severe.
The school district apologized after the uproar and said in a written statement, “We deeply regret our actions today and the embarrassment that it caused several of our students. We have met with some of the students involved and apologized to them.”
Steven Unowsky, Richfield’s superintendent, said that the actions were “inappropriate,” and he added, “There are multiple failures we had in this situation and our job is to fix it. First and foremost [in] the way we treated our kids. We should never leave kids with the feeling they had from the experience.”
It seems like kind of a no-brainer that school workers of any kind SHOULD NOT do this to kids, but apparently, this district needed a reminder. Let’s hope we don’t have to see these kind of stories in the news anymore. All kids in school deserve to have a good meal, even if their parents are a little behind on lunch payments, don’t you agree?
