Portsmouth students' lunch prices bumped up by 15 cents

Well, there are too many parent who send their kids to school just so they do not have to pay for daycare. There are too many teacher who are simply doing their time waiting for retirement. There are too many school officials who haven't a clue. And in my experience, no one have enough time for the students. I have tried on many occasions to get some school official to call me about something and rarely do they call and when they do, I get the same sad song and dance. "Too many students to worry about your kid."

Don't get me wrong, I have met some very good people in the Portsmouth Schools too!

If it were $260,000 worth of parking tickets do you think the city would go after that? Sure they would. How about unpaid taxes? Poor-smouth is committed to being a welfare city at the expense of the working class.

It's easier to control the masses if they know dissent causes the free money to stop.

Teachers do not run the school, Principles do not run the schools, and some worthless character trying to build a political career is in charge and running the school and not desiring to make a voter mad. Give us a break, I know teachers in P-Town whom credit reports are so bad they sell grades. My Step daughter threatens the guard with fondling if he approaches her with the wand to see if she is carrying a weapon, and gets away with it. She is never without her cell phone, and this is middle school. Get a severe incident and every kid is calling someone, can’t pay for lunch but that phone works. Take the phones and fine the parents, make that parent supply correct income, college requires tax papers, give the teachers the right to bust Jr. and Sissy down to acting like a child. Put in real metal detectors and make those that pop wait against the wall until proper staff can do a strip search. A cheese sandwich is heaven to that.

There is no such thing as a free lunch...someone is paying for it. I have never understood WHY they let those families get so far behind in paying for their children's lunches??? If you do not have the money you do not get a lunch. Sure...in elementary school maybe ONE day you will be provided something to eat. On the second day...call the parents at work if necessary...make them take time off work and come to the school. A few trips to the school would definately make the parents more aware of the situation. And...if that doesn't do it...then charge them with child abuse for not feeding their children??? As for the Jr. High and High School kids...oh come on now...accountability. They certainly remember their ipods or what ever the current trend is. Have a GREAT day!

I am sure there are thousands of parents that live in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach that travel to Portsmouth daily just to put their children in the wonderful P-town schools.......if nothing else but to save the $1.15 on lunches.

Why do people keep voting some of these school board members in?! Something absolutely needs to be done about these "charged" lunches that never get paid. The charged lunches need to be tracked or deleted completely. As far as a cheese sandwich or PBJ, what the heck is wrong with that? There is nothing humiliating about eating an alternative cheese sandwich or PBJ. I am tired of paying for all these "freebies" in Portsmouth. This is a lot of money we are talking about. For those who may say "then move", well I'm working on getting my ducks in a row towards that goal.

Explain that to Westhaven Elementry. Then go over and let Walters Middle know also.

To answer Leighb18417,It is your Portsmouth School Board Chairman Bridgeford that has determined that it is not "feasible" to go after the $260,0000 owed by these working parents. He knows exactly where these students and these parents live. You must remember these are not the "free" lunches that are served each year, thousands of times over, to students of parents that cannot "afford" to pay. Bridgeford in a news article stated that it might not be cost effective to persue this revenue due. I say that we as citizens think it might not be "cost effective" to pay his salary! This is just another example in Portsmouth where we the citizens are not getting our moneys worth. Do you know that on average, the State of Virginia graduates close to 78% of its high school students, while Portsmouth graduates 32-33% of its high school students. While all of this is taking place, we the citizens of Portsmouth are paying more to educate each student than in 94% of the rest of the State. Hey $260,00 is alot of money to me. It could buy 2 and 1/2 additional consultants for Portsmouth. I think I will go make a cheese sandwich for lunch. Whats wrong with that?

You got to feel sorry for kids who are stuck having to ask for a free lunch beacuse they have some lazy parent you rather waste the couple of dllars a week on a lottery ticket, smokes, or whatever. God help the poor teachers and administration that has to deal with these dead beat parents. To twist a Hillary phrase around, this "Village" is getting tired of having "to raise your kids"!!!

One detail hasn't been addressed with all this reporting of debt incurred for school lunches. What kind of records were being kept by the cafeteria managers? Do they KNOW who/when/how much $/how many times per semester? To me, that is a crucial bit of information. If the manager just waves the child on through the line, there's no record of the incident. In the grades where there's a homeroom teacher, a preliminary form should be filled-in to indicate a charge is going to occur during the lunch period.

That's my 15 cents worth....

I attended Portsmouth Public Schools for 13 years and worked there for 9. I know how horrible the school lunches are. It is okay to raise the school lunch prices. But it is not okay to ridicule an innocent 5 or 6 year old child by making that child eat a cheese sandwich because he or she doesn't have lunch money. It is the parents' fault. Some parents will not fill out a lunch application because they do not want the school board to know their personal business. Why isn't the school board tracking down these parents who owe the school lunch money. If you send a letter home and it is returned to sender, then the parents are lying about their addresses! I bet 1/2 those people who owe $260,000 for lunch aren't even Portsmouth residents! How else would you explain the school's inability to track these parents down?

If same parent collects any type of public assistance or child support then it falls into fraud.

If they are on public assistance, they are already qualifying for free meals.

As a senior citizen professional and born-and-bred P-Towner, this action really irks me; and, I feel the whole school board should be relieved and replaced with "leaders". When are you gonna realize that there really are "no free meals"...it's not just a saying! Similar to the other localities higher teacher salary issue, our school board is the only one off the chart in the wrong direction.

would to be to hold that child’s report card and advancement status until meals are paid for. If the parent(s) fails to pay then it falls into an area of child neglect / abuse. Parents are responsible for the overall welfare of the child. If same parent collects any type of public assistance or child support then it falls into fraud. Make the parent responsible for the child. Not the honest people trying to make a living and paying their debts.

Our Middle and High School Students currently pay $1.75! Our benefit for the higher prices paid; hard buns on the sandwiches and frozen tater tots! I've eaten the meals and they are nasty!

As horrible as the food is in the Portsmouth public schools,the city should be paying those poor kids to eat the food ! My children were in Portmouth schools for a short time. I can tell you from experience,they wouldn't sell that slop to adults. It makes me wonder how many of those school board members eat that food. I sent my mother to eat lunch with my children for a Thanksgiving meal one year and my mother said the food was so horrible that she asked me never to invite her again to eat lunch with them.The gravy on the "turkey" was congealed. My daughter came home one day from school and told us about how during lunch they made an announcement in the cafeteria for everyone who had bought lunch to put their fork down and stop eating. The reason was because they had found a bug cooked into a child's lunch !!!