Shaming Children So Parents Will Pay the School Lunch Bill

The practice is widespread — a 2014 report from the Department of Agriculture found that nearly half of all districts used some form of shaming to compel parents to pay bills. (About 45 percent withheld the hot meal and gave a cold sandwich, while 3 percent denied food entirely.)

by Bettina Elias Siegel 

Don’t send your kids to second grade

If you have lunch bills still unpaid.

The luncheon ladies will assail

Your little ones with stalks of kale.

A guy named Guido will appear

And pinch your loved ones in the rear.

And all they’ll get for nourishment

Is a cruel discouragement.

An unpaid school lunch bill today

Is treated worse than KKK.