Trimble County parents protest ‘humiliating’ treatment of students whose school lunchroom accounts are in the red

Parents in Trimble County are demanding that the county schools stop serving cheese sandwiches to students whose lunchroom accounts are in the red, Kayla Vanover of WAVE-TV in Louisville reports.

“Embarrassing, humiliating and ‘flat out wrong’ is how parents described
the school’s policy to take a student’s lunch right off the lunch table
and toss it because the child’s parents had not replenished their
account to cover the meal,” Vanover reports.

On May 20, Lori Ritchie’s daughter “sat down to eat, but her hot meal was thrown away and she was given a cheese sandwich with a side,” Vanover reports. “Ritchie said she doesn’t blame the workers, but she said the policy needed to be changed a long time ago. Wednesday, a special called public meeting with the school board allowed other
parents and community members to voice their opinions on the current
policy, in hopes an agreement could be made.”

Doug Joyce, grandfather of a student, told the board, “It is bullying. We
throw kids out of school or reprimand them for bulling, so why should we
let grown-ups bully kids like that?” A board member, unidentified in Vanover’s story, said “We don’t want any child to be embarrassed or receive an alternative meal, so we are really going to beef up the communication.”