No, it shouldn’t have. But odds are its an honest mistake and not one to crucify anyone over.
PTOs are run by regular people, usually moms, who have a lot going on. School Secretaries who put these things together have even more. So it isn’t really surprising that something slipped in that shouldn’t have.
My ex-wife decide to run the PTO of our kids school for a year. She ended up lasting a year because it was so poorly managed and no one wanted to listen to her. She has a law degree and works as a government investigator, so she has a high attention to detail. She found several issues with how casually they keep track of their funds. They sell these coupon books or pre paid cards to stores and make a percentage off of each one. So literally thousands of dollars in a small box, and it has been left in a person’s car while they were out and about etc. Other accounting practices that could get your NFP status revoked. I am sure several other things I am forgetting. If the PTO was twice as competent as the one she worked with, it would still be easy to see why this would have been left in.
No, just a little frustrated. I wanted to understand something and all I got was anger and driving trollies. I do appreciate your reply.
Okay, I understand that and I agree. If this were in the classroom (who gets the best choice of desk) or even related to the classroom (getting a locker closer to the classroom), I would agree that it’s in bad taste and was a poor idea that should never gotten out of that first fiter round of the brainstorming session. But, this is about the lunch line. I find myself not feeling as strongly about it because of that.
I know this starts to sound all ‘slipper[y] slope’, but my kids school auctions off a choice parking space for funding (through the PTO). I’ve never heard anyone complain about it. Maybe it helps that a teacher wins it every year. Does that escape this rule or have we somehow gotten lucky that no one has yet complained? Maybe because it doesn’t directly effect a child?
On the practical front:
So the rich kids get through the line fast while the food is hot and and as good as it will get. By the time to poor kids get up to order the favorite food is sold out and the poor kids get whatever is left over. As the poor kids sit down to eat the rich kids have now moved to the playground to take control of the the favorite locations and enjoy some nice R&R. As the poor kids finally make it out to the playground and go to the end of yet another line the bell rings and they return to class with little or no R&R and maybe just feeling a little pissed off which might just lead to an outburst in class which leads to detention or expulsion and labels of thug and trouble maker and so they miss the test prep and fail a final.
On the cultural front:
Rich kids eat first sounds an awful lot like the history of a water fountain for whites and water fountain for blacks. It also sounds a lot like POC have to sit in the back of the bus. As you put it what does water fountains and the bus ride have to do with education? To answer it teaches the rich kids that they are better than the poor kids and models ways for those kids to spend a lifetime knee capping poor people while pretending to be “fair” and that they are just following the rules.
Yes. It helps that the teachers are paying with their own money, so the parking space is something that they worked for, not an unearned privilege being given to them because they had connections. And the teachers presumably all earn about the same amount of money, so there’s a level playing field.
That said, if one of the teachers had a rich spouse and was able to leverage that to win the auction every single year, then after a while there might be some grumbling. (It’s complicated; it depends on whether people are seeing the parking space as a minor convenience, or as an excuse for an ostentatious display of wealth.)
In some schools, if you don’t get in the lunch line early enough, you literally don’t have time to eat the food. Lunchtimes, like recess, are being cut shorter in many schools so they can jam in more classroom time.
I was in high school in the late 80’s, and it was exactly this problem. If you weren’t in line RIGHT at the beginning of the lunch period, you’d only have a few minutes to scarf down your food by the time you got it. And you weren’t allowed to take it out of the “lunch area” even if you had a sympathetic 5th period teacher who’d let you finish it in class.
I still occasionally have nightmares about getting in a lunch line too late.
A couple of points here. Kids hit the lunch line by class, so if the food isn’t kept warm and fresh, there is no way the 4th graders will get decent food when it’s been several hours since the Kindergarteners got to eat. Having the right amount of food and keeping it in the right condition is a logistical one that all school cafeterias solve to one degree or another. If they aren’t doing their job in that way, then think of the situation without this ‘fast pass’ for the rich kids. Somebody isn’t going to get hot/good food and it will be decided by the order their class gets sent to the lunch room. You can imagine the uproar if they always runn out of 'tater-tots half way through the third grade and the fourth graders never get any. So, I would have to say that’s a non-issue.
The playground one may be an issue if that’s how the school handles playground time. The schools near me solved that by having a fixed time for kids to eat–which is sufficient for the very last hot lunch kid to eat at a reasonable pace–before anyone is excused.
I agree with you on this aspect. It could lead to such an outcome.
Thanks for taking the time to respond to me. I appreciate it.
Wow, that sucks! Sorry to hear that it’s still stressing you out. I still have the “oh crap, I signed up for a class, thought I dropped it, never attended class or tests and it’s the end of the semester and I’m in big trouble” dreams from time to time.
I have a child that east really slowly–I’m told it’s a phase–so I pack their lunch. They can just sit down immediately when their class gets to the lunch room and they can start eating. It’s still a rare day when the lunch gets fully eaten.
[begin devils advocate mode] so, you’re saying this would have been worth $100 to you…[end devils advocate mode]
Sorry, please let me rephrase. I don’t mean it’s not important, I meant to imply that there are relatively simple ways for the school administration to fix the situtation that would lead to that problem and the[y] darn well should be doing so. If not, then that seems like a good area to hold their feet to the fire.
And there are certainly differences amongst schools and regions, indeed.
No, because I have the kind of mind that would immediately wonder how that would work if everyone paid the money. I’d dismiss it as ludicrous because it’s such an obviously impractical idea. Plus, as a teacher myself, I guarantee you they’d stop enforcing this 3 months into the year because it would be far too much of a pain to keep track of who was allowed to jump the line.
Longer lunchtime, better staffed cafeterias, flexibility in where you can eat… those all seem like much easier and more practical solutions to me.
No, I understand that a school could choose to make sure that the last kid has the same quality and set of choices that the first kid in line has. But they also may not take that effort. And even if the school district says that is how it should be it doesn’t mean that is how it will happen on day to day basis. Some grown ups working in a school could have prejudice against the kids that can’t afford to pay to jump to the front of the line for a variety of reasons. If a kid decided to complain about this it would be a grown-up against and poor kid who might very well be ignored for a variety of biased reasons.
But all of the basic practical issues aside. Think about what that teaches our kids? The rules don’t apply if you are rich. And yes, I know that that is the case in much of life. A billionaire steals millions by defrauding investors and gets a fine that is a fraction of what they stole and no jail time. A poor person steals food to eat and they will most like get jail time.
But enforcing these ideas on a daily basis with young children will just make the disparity normal.
Another way to think about it is what if your kids specifically were singled out to always be last. Last to eat. Last to shower in gym class. Last to go in games. Last to whatever… Even when they are in line first. Some other kids could just walk up, make an asshole remark, and cut and be in the right? What would that do to their self esteem from k-6. Doesn’t matter if it’s economic, racial, or because they have attached ear lobes. Kids internalize systematic institutionalized discrimination even if it is about what adults might think is trivial.
Of course this isn’t Pareto-Optimal at all, since PO efficiency requires that someone be made better off while no one is made less well off. What you have here is, maybe, Kaldor-Hicks efficient in that the line jumper and the school together are made more better off than kids who get shoved back in line are rendered (in aggregate) less well off.
I remember, decades ago, a suggestion in the Daedalus column of New Scientist to the effect that omnibus passengers should be able to continuously feed - if they wished (purely voluntary) - an onboard coinslot machine to indicate to the driver their enthusiasm for their preferred bus stop. I daresay modern tech could do this properly now. Would be interesting to witness the ensuing [insert prediction here].
People who are infuriated by this are imagining the hurt felt by a child that is told they have to go to the back of the line. Children learn more by watching how adults act than they do by listening to their words, so the stated goals of the policy are irrelevant. Children understand the higher social status conferred by being at the front of the line. Teaching children that they are less valuable than other children is a bad thing to do.
I can definitely provide a reasoned account of that and I’ll take all comers if someone wants to debate the issue.
I should resist my urge to be judgmental of someone who doesn’t feel that instinctively, because neurodiversity makes us all stronger. Still, that’s a tough calculation and I understand why other people don’t see it the same way as I do.
I realize this might be taken badly, but if someone asked me to lay a bet right now whether you were a well meaning person with an unusual point of view or a horrible trollish asshole, I’d have to put my money on the latter. In my mind, that’s not an offensive thing to say because I know so little about you that my opinion of you should be of no consequence to you. So when other people react to your comment by thinking you are a trolley (rather than by saying, “I’d put $20 down this person is a trolley”) I think they are making a reasonable calculation for their own standpoint. After all, what is lost if they believe you are driving trollies them? There are 7 billion people on Earth, we aren’t going to spend our time with all of them.
I have a different calculation on the issue:
I have a lot of genuine care for unusual people and I’m willing to risk a bit of my time to interact with someone who is different.
I use disagreements as an opportunity to get smarter, it’s like weight-lifting.
When discussing an issue in public, I think about the audience rather than just the person I’m talking to.
I’ll elaborate a little on that last point, even if you happen to be doing this just for a laugh or to piss people off, there could be someone else reading who finds the discussion important. So it doesn’t actually matter to me whether the person I’m talking to is being genuine or not - I’m interacting with the cloud of people who might be reading and the cloud of people who might be responding. It’s like I haven’t opened the box and I’m not actually interacting with anyone until the wave form collapses (this is meant as an analogy, quantum physics has no bearing on this situation).
So sorry to whatever part of that probability cloud of people who genuinely didn’t understand and was interested in this for being made to feel like you are wrong for being who you are. This is a great learning opportunity, however. That feeling of being judged and being told you were wrong and bad just because you are different than the people around you - that is what this policy would have inflicted on young children.
Fortunately no one is getting crucified - i.e. brutally and horribly murdered. Instead they are having to deal with public outrage. I think having to experience some of the hurt you caused others with your error seems like a proportional punishment.
But that’s kind of my point. Is the “punishment” of having people in the BB forums get angry about this really disproportionate to the “crime” of accidentally telling families their children will be treated as second class children if they can’t pay a fee? I think helping the people who made this mistake (and the person who made the suggestion in the first place) understanding the harm they did is probably exactly the right outcome to rectify the wrong done.
