On Tuesday, 40 kids among the 500+ students at Uintah Elementary School in Salt Lake City had their lunches taken away and thrown out. This was ordered by a district Child Nutrition Manager (HA), because the kids’ parents had balances due on school lunch payments.

According to the Salt Lake City Tribune, “cafeteria workers weren’t able to see which children owed money until they had already received lunches,” so after the kids were all served, the staffers took some lunches away and tossed them “because once food is served to one student it can’t be served to another.”

SLC School District Child Nutrition Manager offering student a replacement lunch

The parasite children were allowed milk and fruit.

Talking Points Memo quoted school district spokesman Jason Olsen: “If students were humiliated and upset, that’s very unfortunate and not what we wanted to happen.” And Mr. Olson, if your eyeball hurts after I flick it with my forefinger, that’s very unfortunate and not what I wanted to happen. It’s just that I get twitchy when bureaucrats offer terrible “if” apologies, and my finger does things. In addition, wimpy constructions like “that’s very unfortunate” cause me to have an unfortunate reaction that I did not want to happen, like thinking that many people in the “Child Nutrition Department” in the Salt Lake City school district should lose their jobs. Oh wait, no, that’s not unfortunate at all and I do want that to happen. My mistake. Apologies.

In a note on its Facebook page, the Salt Lake City compounded its horrid apologizing by first launching into a couple of paragraphs about how they’d TRIED contacting the parents of the de-lunched students for TWO WHOLE DAYS, if you include the day the lunches were taken away. Which would technically be a day and a half, but who’s counting. And they NOBLY gave the freeloader spawn a fruit and a milk OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF THEIR HEARTS, “so children who don’t have money for lunch can at least have some food and not go without.” I WEEP WITH THE GENEROSITY. The statement explains that children pick up their lunches before they get to the computer, so there was NO WAY OF KNOWING which children’s lunches had to be stripped from their tiny, grasping, mooching hands.

The apology part doesn’t come until the fifth paragraph: “This situation could have and should have been handled in a different manner. We apologize.”

Well THAT was effusive.

Then the next paragraph goes on to imply that this is all the school’s fault anyway, since it’s the school’s job to tell families when they’re in arrears, and a lot of the families said they were shocked by the whole “publicly taking away children’s food because you’re behind on payments” thing, so yeah, did we just say “we apologize”? We meant “you should totes demand the principal’s head on a pike” because he was supposed to TELL YOU that we were going to humiliate your kids. Or you know what, get the cafeteria manager’s head! Yes! “The district has specific guidelines for school kitchen managers on how parents should be notified, and we are currently investigating to see if these guidelines were followed correctly.” See, we are investigating! Not ourselves and our child nutrition department, but OTHER people, who are NOT the people who ordered the children’s lunches taken away from them in front of their peers. Look, a tree!

Hungry kids can’t learn. Because they’re hungry. Not letting kids go hungry is kind of fundamental. Most teachers and administrators understand that. Indeed, as one of the commenters on the Facebook page pointed out:

A friend of mine is a school teacher in Kentucky. His school district recently had a snow day in a Friday. The superintendent was so concerned that low-income kids would not have enough to eat for the weekend, he had all the central office staff bag lunches and personally drive the food out to the homes of the kids who received subsidized lunches.

In NYC, there is a free breakfast and lunch program in the schools every day during the summer, because school is sometimes the only place poor kids can get a good meal. I’m sure there are similar protections in other towns and cities (and you should feel free to tell us about them in comments).

Hey, Salt Lake City School District, maybe you wanna take down the FIGHT CHILD HUNGER post on the FRONT PAGE of your web site:

And try apologizing again. Maybe a kid can tell you how.

Try putting something like THAT on your wall.