In School Lunch Struggles, the Kids Suffer
An elementary school cafeteria worker in Pennsylvania says she resigned from her position after a new school district policy forced her to take hot lunches away from two hungry students even though the school throws away pounds of food daily.
Stacy Koltiska, who worked for the Canon McMillan School District in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, worked for two years at Wylandville Elementary. However, last Thursday she announced that she was resigning because of her disagreement with a new school district policy that required her to take away lunches from two students.
Koltiska wrote in a Facebook post that under the new policy, which was enacted over the summer and immediately went into effect this school year, students who fall more than $25 in debt on their school lunch account will not be given a hot lunch.
While older students (grades 7 through 12) who fall more than $25 in debt will not be given anything to eat, state law requires the school to feed children who are in kindergarten through sixth grade. So for those younger students who fall over $25 in debt, the district's new policy requires that they must be given a sandwich.
However, Koltiska contends that even the sandwich the school district wants the cafeteria workers to hand out to those students in debt has little dietary value, yet the children are still being charged full price.