My daughter came home from school today with some interesting news. She forgot her lunch money, and apparently under the East Brunswick school district’s new money saving/IOU-discouraging policy, students are only allowed to receive a cheese sandwich for lunch if they forget their lunch money.
I called the district office, and the policy was confirmed to me by an assistant. Although they are required to repay their IOU at full price, students will eat what they are told or else they won’t eat at all.
Now, I know the East Brunswick Board of Education is desperate to save money and that desperation seems to really be hitting the child-nutrition department square, shall we say, in the mouth, the situation becomes ethically challenging when it starts hurting our children.
By the way, before a near riot at a recent board meeting, the child-nutrition department was slated to be partially shut down and outsourced, so I guess threatening our kids with forced lunches was inevitable.
Martin Spielman
East Brunswick