sending collectors after lunch money in the richest country on earth

deep breath…

Cranston Rhode Island has announced that they have hired a collection agency to go after families of students with unpaid lunches over 20$.  According to the Cranston School District page one week of lunches costs 16.25 for middle and high school and 12.50 for elementary school. So we aren’t even talking about two weeks worth of lunches.

from the article:

The current unpaid balance is $45,859.

Votto says the school district has tried to collect unpaid balances in the past without much success. He says the lunch program cannot continue to lose revenue.

Votto says the collection agency will send a letter to parents who owe $20 or more and who haven’t paid their balance within 60 days.

In this article from CBS Boston which reported on the hiring it is mentioned that: “Students who owe money will receive the same lunches paying students receive.”

but that doesn’t fit with the policy from the Cranston Public Schools unpaid lunch page:

4.     Once a student has charged five (5) meals (middle\high school $16.25 & elementary $12.50) and no payment has been received, that student will receive a lunch consisting of a sunny butter sandwich, fruit, and milk in place of a hot lunch. This meal maintains the USDA standards surrounding reimbursable meals and will be charged at full price to the student’s account.

am I reading this correctly where the kid who has the lunch debt gets the prison lunch which still costs the same as the regular lunch? because THAT IS BULLSHIT.

and speaking of prison lunches, those are free, paid for with your tax dollars, so if we can pay prison lunches (which we should, and the prison thing is a whole other conversation for another day) we should sure as hell be paying for our children to eat some damn lunch.

Transworld Systems is the company that has been hired to do the collecting.

I HATE the idea of a gofundme to get this paid off, I think crowdsourcing government services which should ALREADY BE FRICKING PAID FOR is crap. But I’m not sure what the alternative is.

I don’t have a solution or a plan, I just have this rant, and some time on my hands and smart friends, so… I like our chances.

also – I looked – there is already a gofundme set up with a goal of 10,000$.

xoxo