PA School District Threatens to Call Foster Care on Parents Who Don't Pay
Off Children's Lunch Debt
By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Jezebel
21 July 19
Joseph Muth, a director of federal programs for Pennsylvania's Wyoming
Valley West School District, sent a letter to approximately 1,000 parents
last week threatening that the school district would report them to
'Dependency Court' if they did not immediately pay their children's
outstanding school lunch balance.
Per the Washington Post, Muth's letter read:
"Your child has been sent to school every day without money and without a
breakfast and/or lunch," the 200-word letter read. "This is a failure to
provide your child with proper nutrition and you can be sent to Dependency
Court for neglecting your child's right to food. If you are taken to
Dependency court, the result may be your child being removed from your home
and placed in foster care."
The letter, versions of which were obtained by various news organizations
including the Post and NBC News, was swiftly denounced by other school
district board members and officials in Luzerne County, which runs the
foster care program. Joanne Von Saun, Luzerne's Director of Children and
Youth Services, told ABC affiliate WNEP that the threat was "unacceptable...
This causes more antagonism so that when we're knocking on the doors,
families see us more as a threat instead of an agency that will provide
support and lend assistance." She added that she viewed it as "terrorizing
children and families."
On Friday, Muth backtracked, telling ABC News that it was a "mistake" to
send the threatening letter, but he declined to disclose how the letter
initially came about. But Charles Coslett, a school board member who has
reportedly "forced 50 families to dependency court for truancy where parents
risked having their children placed in foster care because their kids kept
on skipping school," stood by the letter. Coslett told ABC News:
"It merely lays out the options available to the district if people continue
to ignore their parental responsibility and the nutritional needs of their
minor sons and daughters... These parents need to look in the mirror...This
matter isn't going away merely because delinquent debtors make Valley West
the bad guy."
The school district is trying to collect a little over $22,000 in lunch
debt, in a county where 14 percent of families live below the poverty line
and where the school district "qualifies for enough money to provide free
lunches to all students for the upcoming school year," per WNEP. And while
Wyoming Valley West School Board Vice President David Usavage, who condemned
the letter, told WNEP that similar letters wouldn't be leveraged in the
future, this type of threat is part of a larger national trend in which
schools and school districts adopt practices that effectively shame and
punish children and parents who can't afford to pay for lunch. In May, Nadra
Nittle wrote an investigation for Eater about this practice, nothing that
after the "Great Recession, "a number of school districts found themselves
in a financial crunch and began using punitive measures to settle meal
debt."
Nittle cited incidents in Rhode Island, Minnesota, Colorado, and Alabama,
among others, in which students were publicly shamed for their debt and
withheld hot lunches or even academic honors, and chronicled the ways this
type of punishment can effect children's self-esteem and ability to perform
well in school overall. Nittle also wrote about the ways school districts
punish parents with delinquent lunch bills, sending them to debt collectors
among other family-upending consequences. (It's a comprehensive,
illuminating, infuriating piece-read it in full here.)
As for the Wyoming Valley West School District's Coslett, who is also
representing the board as their lawyer, it seems like shaming might just be
part of the calculus. Referring to a letter received by a mother who owed
$75, he told WNEP, "Where did that $75 go? Is it going to cigarettes? Is it
going to alcohol? We don't know. That's right, we don't know that," he said.
Email This Page
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
