Pa. school cafeteria worker quits in ‘lunch shaming’

Until last Thursday, Stacy Koltiska had been an employee in the Canon McMillan, Pennsylvania school district for two years, working as a cafeteria employee at Wylandville Elementary. A similar fate befell Dalene Bowden, a cafeteria worker in Pocatello, Idaho, in December, when she provided a 12-year-old with a hot tray despite the student’s inability to pay for it. In cases when money is owed, a letter is then sent home to parents.

After being forced to take back the chicken and give the boy the cheese sandwich, Koltiska, pictured below, decided she had had enough.

Since resigning, Koltiska said that she has received messages of support from inmates in a nearby prison who want to donate their food to the schoolchildren and a nun who told Koltiska that she started a revolution “with a cheese sandwich”. “They’re suits at a board meeting”, she said.

“They messed with the wrong lunch lady”, she joked in a phone interview with the Guardian on Tuesday.

‘I’m not saying the parents shouldn’t be held accountable, but I think there has to be a better way than involving the children, ‘ she said. “My supervisor said, ‘Well don’t let the child see you throw it away.’ That isn’t the point”, she said.

You don’t know is that they are being given One Piece of Cheese on Bread.

Even so, we’re glad Koltiska is taking a stand for students who can’t. “You never know someone’s circumstance”.

But Koltiska said she disagreed with the district’s solution.

Speaking to the Washington Post, she added: ‘As a Christian, I have an issue with this.

It happened like this: new policies arose that basically shamed students to get parents to pay student debt. “On Friday, I had to take a little first-grade boy’s chicken and give him this ‘cheese sandwich, ‘ ” she wrote.

District Supt. Matthew Daniels defended the policy, saying that it’s not meant to shame or embarrass children and it doesn’t target kids who qualify for free lunches.

The 300-plus families who were in arrears before the policy was implemented owed the district between $60,000 to $100,000 annually. Now the number of families is down to 70 and the cost $20,000. The policy doesn’t target those in need of financial assistance. “There has never been the intent with the adoption of this policy to shame or embarrass a child”, Superintendent Matthew Daniels told CBS.

In a lengthy post on Facebook, Koltisca explained her decision to quit and outlined why the policy’s effects went far beyond familiar rhetoric surrounding welfare and the taxpaying families who arguably took advantage of the district’s past leniency. “They’re very loving and kind to the children”, Koltiska said.