School Lunch-Shaming Argument Analysis

When elementary school lunch room staffer Stacy Koltiska was forced to throw away a young boy’s lunch because he had a negative balance, she said she would never forget the look in the little boy’s eyes, and resigned from her job out of a moral obligation. Koltiska commented: ““There’s enough wealth in this world that no child should go hungry, especially in school. To me this is just wrong.” While many of us in this classroom may never have experienced being denied a school lunch, less fortunate students nationwide have, for a reason they had no control over. With national legislation being passed titled the ‘No Child Left Behind Act’ and the ‘Every Student Succeeds Act’, it’s easy to see the hypocrisy in simultaneously holding the ideas that,

Though proponents of this method argue that it has lowered meal debt and the amount of families failing to pay, Stacy Koltiska refutes this claim by saying: “[The ones making these policies] are suits at a board meeting…They are not the ones facing a child and looking them in the eye and taking their food away.” While it is irrefutable that debt in schools is a problem that must be tackled, it is not a justifiable excuse to take a child’s midday meal out of his or her hands and throw it into a trash can because his or her parents can not put money into their child’s lunch account. There is no excuse for denying a child a hot meal or making them go hungry during the school day for something that is not their fault. Their dietary and nutritional needs are not a bargaining tool for the school system to use under any