<p>Me, too…</p>
<p>and what is so different about lunch balances that they alone require this form of communication? How is it that all other educational matters can be handled through non-flesh-based communcation?</p>
<p>Do you have a problem with an amusement park or a Chucky Cheese making a mark on your child? Or an arm bracelet? Cmon this is NOT Nazi Germany and no one is saying that any kid should go hungry. For all anyone knows this principal was let go for any number of reasons and is using the media ( wow who could have the the media could be used?) to raise outrage about a totally unrelated issue. And before anyone tells me I’m wrong let me state that NOBODY knows what really happened other than the principal and the school.</p>
<p>
Those institutions are not run by the government, and those marks are voluntary.</p>
<p>SS–I am asking why in this one instance you think it’s necessary when in all others it isn’t. Simple question.</p>
<p>And what Hunt said.</p>
<p>Since this is described as a charter school, I am assuming that this is a public school. If it’s a private school, they can stamp people’s hands if their customers agree to it.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is simply a matter of public and private, but of context. First of all, in an amusement park, EVERYONE gets his or her hand stamped. It isn’t a means of singling certain people out. But even beyond that, the school is ideally cultivating a different kind of relationship with students and families than Six Flags is. At the amusement park, the customers are anonymous, and there is a steady and ever-changing stream of them. Workers there couldn’t possibly know the people they are encountering, so some sign of entry is necessary. There’s no better way to keep track of whatever they are keeping track of with the mark. I think it is reasonable to expect schools, who have multiple other options at their disposal and are trying to develop a meaningful relationship with both students and their parents, to do better.</p>
<p>In the amusement park, there also isn’t the issue of treating children like babies past the period where that might be appropriate. At five, I probably wouldn’t have cared if my hand were stamped to remind my mother of something. By ten, I’m pretty sure I would have resented the heck out of the assumption that I couldn’t understand a simple instruction or have a conversation with my own parents.</p>
<p>I wonder how these schools send home results of lice checks???</p>
<p>What is so hard about “I’m giving you this note to give to your mom?”</p>
<p>well there’s a big hole with this unless it’s given to the child at the end of the school day. If you expect the lunch lady to hand out notes when the child gets his lunch, then likely that note will never leave the lunchroom except in the trash bin. </p>
<p>Frankly, there are just too many notes that never make it home or out of the bottom of the backpack until it’s too late.</p>
<p>This hand-stamping goes on across the nation. If there truly were soooo many kids horrified by it, don’t you think we’d have heard an uproar LONG BEFORE NOW?? (and there isn’t even an uproar now!) </p>
<p>P.S. I love the analogy of the “bus animals” designating which bus a student gets on. The bunny kids go to the bus that travels to ritzy areas…the tiger kids’ buses go to the projects. What about THAT ? I think that could be more embarrassing. Imagine all those nasty mean girls taunting…oh, we’re bunny kids…and you’re tiger kids. That would be far more awful.</p>
<p>^well, according to your second paragraph, then logically the kids should come home covered in stamps.</p>
<p>
I’ve never heard of this before. Perhaps the schools around here know that they could never do this.</p>
<p>School lunch, transportation, field trips and vaccinations are the four areas I can think of where the school is not mandated to provide services unless the parent/guardian pays or signs or does what is requested, or their is a special ed plan in place. Kids usually want to go on field trips, and so they tend to be pretty good about getting their parents to sign the permission slip. There have been uproars (not at this school, to my knowledge) when kids have been eventually turned away from bus service for failure to pay a required transportation fee. The health department helps enforce vaccination rules, though the rules are pretty lax in our state unless there’s been a pertussis, chicken pox or TB outbreak, but holds on registration happen at the start of the year when parents have more interest in getting Johnny going.</p>
<p>As long as kids are getting something to eat at lunch, a lot of them don’t remember to mention a lunch balance to their parents. Teachers fishing through backpacks on Monday typically find many materials that parents didn’t fish out on Friday. (Sometimes, tuna fish sandwiches. :() Emails (which this school apparently sends, according to their website) may or may not get opened. Divorced families where the kid moves back and forth during the week are particularly challenging. </p>
<p>I’d guess that there are hundreds of schools around the country that use a hand stamp to tell parents to fund the lunch account. It is quick and easy for a harried cafeteria staff member to do, and it doesn’t get tossed with the lunch debris. </p>
<p>In kindergarten and first grade when we really need to get notes home, they’re sometimes pinned to the kid’s coat. I’ve seen permission slips sent that way after a family has managed to ignore Friday folders and emails. I’ve heard parents complain about a lot of things, but never about this.</p>
<p>And after many years of being involved in school administration, this is the very first time I’ve ever heard of a concern with a hand stamp for lunch. Complaints about the lunches, or the quality thereof, or the too-tight time allowed for lunch, or the timing of lunch in a large school when lunch begins at 10:30 to handle the kids, or the elimination of chocolate milk, requests to implement peanut butter free cafeterias, … never about the hand stamps. YMMV.</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of this practice either. I’ve worked in a few very high FRL districts and was a FRL kid myself for a while. </p>
<p>It would bother me if someone was writing on/stamping my kid.</p>
<p>Romani…it may not be an issue at very high FRL districts…there may not be many kids paying for lunch.</p>
<p>This is probably a bigger issue where there are fewer kids getting FRL.</p>
<p>I think people are coming from the place of thinking that POOR kids are being hurt. NO…poor kids have FREE LUNCH so their hands aren’t stamped. Their parents aren’t being told to put money into their accts. </p>
<p>^well, according to your second paragraph, then logically the kids should come home covered in stamps.</p>
<p>Maybe they should! lol Remember in the old days when K kids came home with notes pinned on their shirts? (I got stuck by a few pins!)</p>
<p>Seriously, the “stamped kids” are largely going to be middle/upper middle class kids…not poor kids. Heck, for all we know it could be the exact opposite of what you all are worried about. It’s (unfortunately) a statement that “we pay for our lunches”. It’s not a statement of “we’re poor and can’t pay.”</p>
<p>Actually, at our school this year, they started having the kids stamp their own hands as a reminder. The stamp is on a table near the cash register, and if the student’s account is low the cashier just lets them know and then the student stamps their own had. So if a student really didn’t want to have a stamp, they could just opt not to do it.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>lol…there ya go!!!</p>
<p>Here’s an interesting article about the general issue: [Reduced</a> lunch pay policies causing some students to go hungry | Minnesota Public Radio News](<a href=“http://www.mprnews.org/story/2011/05/06/school-lunches-stigma]Reduced”>Reduced lunch pay policies causing some students to go hungry | MPR News)</p>
<p>I guess I don’t have any problem with a voluntary self-stamp.</p>
<p>You guess?</p>
<p>Well, I would guess that the stamping system is largely used at schools where there are lower numbers of FRL students. At schools where there are very large numbers of FRL students, it may be easier just to call the few homes each day of kids with low levels that day. </p>
<p>My older son went to a public grade school for a few months after we moved and he was on the WL for the private that he eventually went to. Very few FRL kids at his public school. It would be too much of an effort to personally contact each child’s parent for each “low balance”. And since nearly everyone had a “low balance” every once in awhile, there was no shame in that. it was like a low-gas warning in your car…time to fill 'er up.</p>
<p>I don’t really like the idea of markings on kids’ bodies at all. As I said, I guess it’s tolerable if it’s voluntary. But I still don’t like it.</p>
<p>At our school district, the kids would just be told at lunch that your balance is getting low. The kids are then reminded about it at lunch every day until more money is added to their account.</p>
<p>When the balance goes down to $5, a note is sent home. The kids are then reminded about it at lunch every day until more money is added to their account.</p>
<p>If the balance goes negative, another note is sent home. The kids are then reminded about it at lunch every day until more money is added to their account. </p>
<p>Pretty simple and straight forward… and it works.</p>