<p>I don’t see what the parents and kids are complaining about. Although their kids didn’t pay for a meal, they still are getting a nutritious one. Getting free food doesn’t sound like punishment to me. Heck, those lunches they’re complaining about sound like what my mom used to prepare for me.</p>
<p>"ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A cold cheese sandwich, fruit and a milk carton might not seem like much of a meal but that’s what’s on the menu for students in New Mexico’s largest school district without their lunch money.</p>
<p>Faced with mounting unpaid lunch charges in the economic downturn, Albuquerque Public Schools last month instituted a “cheese sandwich policy,” serving the alternative meals to children whose parents fail to pick up their lunch tab.</p>
<p>Such policies have become a necessity for schools seeking to keep budgets in the black while ensuring children don’t go hungry. School districts including those in Chula Vista, Calif., Hillsborough County, Fla., and Lynnwood, Wash., have also taken to serving cheese sandwiches to lunch debtors."</p>
<p>That’s what I got as free lunch 35 years ago when I first came to this country. Of course, I never had cheese before, and the smell would just knock me over. But hey, it was food. Luckily I only had to have it for a few months - Dad got a good job and we were back to hot lunch again.:)</p>
<p>The policy makes sense to me. Nothing comes for free, ultimately. And I’ll guess that a lot of kids either leave much of their lunch ‘on the plate’, or toss it altogether. Wasting both the their parents’ and the school district’s money.</p>
<p>It sounds like this are not people who receive free lunches because of poverty, but those who haven’t paid for lunches. I guess there would be something wrong if poor kids were given only cheese sandwiches every day, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here.</p>
<p>I don’t think these parents have a leg to stand on. If they cannot afford lunch, they can apply for free or reduced lunch. If they do not qualify for that assistance, then they need to pay up or send some food in from home. I think the school is doing a good thing to not let these kids go hungry and to provide some food for those who didn’t bring in lunch money and who are not being served under the federal lunch assistance programs. They care enough about the kids to give them some food.</p>
<p>That’s what I frequently had in my lunch box, packed at home. My milk came in my thermos because the carton cost too much. I wouldn’t eat my sandwiches because my mom insisted on ALWAYS using butter on them for nutritional reasons she said. Butter w/ liverwurst, balogna, peanut butter, American cheese. It got to the point where my lunchbox was inspected at school and I wasn’t allowed to just throw the sandwiches away. My mom would watch me get off the bus and try to ditch them without being caught.</p>
<p>Now a GRILLED cheese sandwich? Still my favorite.</p>
<p>When I was a kid, I was a total freak. I used to bring “mayonnaise” sandwiches to school because I did and still do, love them. Just mayonnaise on white bread.</p>
<p>Now, of course, Mom packed veggies and little salads for me, but it was always a mayonnaise sandwich.</p>
<p>At our sons school when your lunch account hit zero you got a peanut butter sandwhich, a bowl of applesauce and a carton of milk. Both my kids would try and get to zero without my knowing because they preferred that to the regular lunch. Finally, I worked it out with the lunch ladies that they could just eat that if they wanted even if they had money in their accounts. The school was originally resistent to letting them do that because they would afraid that if my kids did that then"everybody will want it"!</p>
<p>Free lunch programs have had this problem for ages. Take a look in the trash cans in the lunch rooms of schools where kids are on these programs. You’ll see so much of the day’s offerings that the waste will boggle your mind. </p>
<p>It’s really a problem with many kids. I remember a sweet girl from my first son’s elementary years whose mother packed the most beautiful, fabulous, nutritious, delicious lunches I have ever seen in an exquisite lunch container. She barely touched it. The rest would go in the trash. Many schools refuse to let the kids thow out their lunches, but make the kids put it in bags or their lunch boxes to bring home so their families could see what was not eaten. </p>
<p>Zooser, mayo sandwiches were a staple at our house too, during my elementary school years. They were a close second to the All-American bologna and cheese sandwich. Are we related?</p>
<p>LakeWashington, could definitely be. Hmmmm. I’ve never met anyone in my life who ate mayo sandwiches but me. It was a source of endless shame for my mother.</p>
<p>“Take a look in the trash cans in the lunch rooms of schools where kids are on these programs.”</p>
<p>I had the opposite experience as a teenaged volunteer in public schools. Volunteers were given the same lunch as the kids. We could not bring in our own food. All the volunteers said we weren’t hungry and declined the lunch because the food was so gross. (Teenage boys going 8 hours without food by choice?) But the schoolchildren ate that food, every bite. They were hungry and not getting enough to eat at home. There is no other explanation for children eating that nasty green pork roll.</p>
<p>The waste is rampant in many schools. School food services will tell you of the balancing act they need to do to provide nutritious foods that the kids will eat.</p>
<p>Zooser and NYMom; was your choice of mayo Hellmans/Best Foods or Kraft? We usually had Nalley’s in our house. That’s a brand mostly found on the west coast. Whenever I visit relatives down south, I always bring home a jar of Duke’s Mayonnaise.</p>
<p>Cheese sandwiches are gross. Our district used to give peanut butter…maybe they can’t anymore because of allergy concerns.</p>
<p>My kids are perpetually running out of lunch money. Husband sends check to school through online banking. He sends precisely the amount of money he thinks they should have for that month. It takes forever for the money to get from the office to the lunch folks. Kids always ask for a cushion and he says they will just spend it. Kids ask for cash and he says no. So they use their allowance for lunch.</p>
<p>Too bad they don’t give free sandwiches in high school!</p>
<p>Missypie, try a cheese sandwich made with Jarlsberg swiss or Fontina from Denmark, or even Maytag Blue cheese from the midwest. I think that you may change your opinion of cheese sandwiches.</p>