9-Year-Old Boy Has Worst Birthday Ever After Lunch Lady Humiliates Him Over $9 Debt

Sep 10, 2021 by apost team

Ideally, birthdays should present nothing but great memories. A 9-year-old's birthday, in particular, should involve fond moments with friends and family getting together.

Unfortunately, one young child found his birthday at school ruined back in September 2019. Rather surprisingly, it wasn't classmate bullies who caused the incident. School workers were responsible for ruining the young boy's special day.

As ABC15 reported, Jefferson Sharpnack moved to Ohio to live with his grandmother in August 2019. He, along with his brothers, signed up for the school's "free and reduced" lunch program. Everyone thought all was well, so Jefferson didn't think much about putting food on his tray. He thought lunch would go as planned with the added benefit of receiving a birthday celebration.

But then things got ugly. The cafeteria staff went up to Jefferson and took food off his tray. Jefferson was both confused and upset over the situation. Adults might take such an incident in stride, but a 9-year-old can feel traumatized when adults treat him in such a hostile way.

“I got my cheesy breadsticks and put in my number,” Jefferson told ABC15. “And when I was going to check out, the lunch lady didn’t say anything, took away my cheesy breadsticks and sauce, put them over there, and took out bread on cheese from the fridge and put it on my tray.”

Jefferson went home, crying to his grandmother and telling her that this had been his worst birthday ever. His grandmother, Diane Bailey, found out the situation revolved around an unpaid $9 balance on a bill to the cafeteria.

The Green Primary School received many angry calls from Bailey. She was upset that her grandson faced such humiliation from the situation. Collecting a debt is within the school's rights, but the way the cafeteria staff carried things out was outrageous.

“In my mind, he didn’t owe anything. I owed the money, the parents, the school district,” Bailey said. “And my other question is, if they take the food off of your tray, they have to throw it away. You would take the food off a tray and you can’t reserve it? You’re going to throw it away and not feed the child? That doesn’t make sense to me.”

Bailey’s complaints seemed to work. According to The Washington Post, the district’s superintendent at the time, Jeffrey L. Miller II, soon announced a new policy: “All students enrolled in PreK through twelfth grades will receive the standard lunch for the day at their respective buildings regardless of their account balance.”

After The Post got in contact with the district regarding the change, a spokesperson told the paper, “Our administration felt strongly that the time to make a change in our lunch guidelines was now and the change took place today.”

Jefferson’s story is part of a larger debate surrounding “lunch shaming” at school. Schools throughout the country made headlines in 2019 when they placed the blame on students for not paying their lunch bills — even though this is ultimately a parent’s job.

According to the PBS Newshour, around 20 million students receive state-subsidized free lunch due to their parents’ income.

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Other students have to pay for their meals, though many don’t, which leaves schools on the hook for the bill. The result? The Newshour reports that 75% of schools have some sort of meal debt, which can run as high as $865,000.

In an interview with the Newshour, the director of school and out-of-school-time programs at the Food and Research Action Center (FRAC), Crystal FitzSimons, explained the problem.

Although the “vast majority” of schools aren’t lunch shaming, FitzSimons says, some have districts shifted the burden onto kids and their families who often can’t afford to pay. And that’s when some schools do shame kids for not having paid their debts.

“So there are lots of kids who fall through the cracks within the school nutrition program, and we really think that it's important for schools — if a family is falling behind in unpaid school meal debt, that it's really important for schools to take a look at whether or not the family is actually eligible for free school meals,” FitzSimons explained.

In 2019, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar introduced legislation to address this problem: the No Shame at School Act. The bill proposes a couple of things, but it would effectively prohibit lunch shaming, forcing schools to communicate with a parent or guardian about meal debt rather than embarrassing a child. Although the bill has been drafted, it has yet to enter the next step of the legislative process as of September 2021.

If the law had been in place when Sharpnack went to get lunch back in 2019, the young man likely would not have had such a miserable birthday.

What do you think about lunch shaming? Do you know anyone who has been lunch shamed before? Let us know, and be sure to pass this story on to get other people's opinions.