A sophomore at University High School in Orange City, Florida was denied lunch on the first day of school due to owing fifteen cents from the last school year.
Kimberly Aiken, the mother of the teen, says her daughter went through the lunch line and grabbed a tray. When she got to the cashier, she told the teen she owed fifteen cents. The teen didn’t have any money, so the cashier took the teen’s tray and threw it in the trash.
Aiken stated that her daughter spent the first day of school without eating. “That’s the big thing — it’s eat breakfast, lunch, so that they can make sure that they’re doing good on their work,” she said. “But then you starve my child?”
A spokesman for Volusia County Public Schools, Roger Edgcomb, responded to questions and concerns about whether or not it was standard procedure to handle students who aren’t able to pay for lunch.
“You want to make sure that your kids are coming to school, and they’re going to be taken care of,” Aiken said. “We already have all of the scary things happening, but the one thing you don’t want them to worry about is are they going to be able to eat when they go to lunch.”
Aiken stated that her daughter brought a quarter to school to make up for the shortage, and the cafeteria worker told her everything was taken care of, and she didn’t owe anything.
