This is a shame: A free sandwich at school isn't good enough

Think there's no such thing as a free lunch? You haven't been to Portsmouth lately.

Bowing to cries from soft-hearted school officials - who worry more about shame than personal responsibility - the city's school superintendent has scrapped a program that provided cheap sack lunches to elementary school children who had unpaid cafeteria bills, and replaced it with what amounts to a limitless lunch-room credit card.

Hang on to your wallets, taxpayers. This is going to cost you.

But before anyone starts weeping about the plight of the poor and hunger in the classroom, keep two things in mind:

One, this dust-up does not involve destitute children. They are simply the unfortunate offspring of parents who seem to think it's too much trouble to prepare a simple lunch in the morning, preferring to let the taxpayers provide one instead. These parents have the means to feed their kids but choose not to do it.

Two, no child goes hungry in our local public schools. Free and reduced lunches are offered to all needy students. Some variation of this compassionate cheese-sandwich solution is available for kids who come to school lunchless in all our local divisions.

Except in Portsmouth, of course.

Children there are now free to run up their cafeteria credit accounts while school officials waste time in futile attempts to collect delinquent funds from their parents through letters and threats of legal action.

Someone ought to remind these deadbeat parents that the taxpayers already provide free public schools and free buses to get the kids to class. Once inside the buildings, the children are given free textbooks. All that's asked of the parents is that they get their children up in the morning and out the door with peanut butter sandwiches in their backpacks.

For some, apparently, even that's too much trouble.

Until recently, students could eat three lunches on credit in Portsmouth. After that, they were handed a sack lunch containing a cheese sandwich, a piece of fruit and a carton of milk. Regular lunches are priced at $1.35. The thrifty bagged meals cost just 64 cents.

Opponents of the cheese-sandwich solution - officially called the "You Left Your Lunch at Home" program - said the modest meals were "embarrassing." One school board member griped that they were reminiscent of the "government cheese" plan from decades ago.

Oh, please.

Most of these kids never heard of "government cheese" - unless they caught the late Chris Farley's hilarious "Living in a Van" routine on "Saturday Night Live" reruns.

Yet, it very well may be embarrassing to be singled out in the cafeteria line and handed a cheese sandwich instead of a hot lunch. At the risk of sounding heartless, whose fault was it the kids were no longer entitled to lunchtime credit?

And when did it become the job of society - or rather, the schools - to guarantee that schoolchildren are kept embarrassment-free? Lots of kids probably are humiliated by their hand-me-down clothes. Will it soon become the responsibility of the schools to dress them, too?

Fact is, in this case, shame seemed to work.

According to a story by Steven Vegh in Thursday's Pilot, the tab for unpaid lunches plummeted in Portsmouth after the cheese-sandwich program was adopted.

Vegh reported that in the 2007-08 school year, schools were stuck with $68,000 in unpaid-lunch charges. That's more than enough to hire a new teacher, by the way. Last year, the lunch bills dropped to just $1,603.

Anyone want to guess where that number will be next year?

One thing's for sure: It's likely to be embarrassing.

Kerry Dougherty, (757) 446-2306, kerry.dougherty@cox.net, PilotOnline.com/dougherty