Colorado principal fired for refusing to stamp hands of children with no lunch money
deathandtaxesmag.com
Children are cruel, and often, it seems, completely unaware of the fact that it’s really horrible to make fun of someone for being poor. When I was in elementary school, I remember some of the “popular girls” demanding that a girl who was obviously poor allow them to “check the tag” of her orange B.U.M. Equipment sweatshirt to prove it was “real.” I remember it pretty vividly because I completely lost my shit and several new assholes were torn that day.
In order to spare some kids the humiliation and potential torment that can and probably would come with being publicly identified as poor, Noelle Roni, the principal of Peak to Peak Charter School in Lafayette, Colorado, fought against a humiliating policy that required children to have their hands stamped when they didn’t have enough money in their lunch accounts.
Via CBS News:
“The kids are humiliated. They’re branded. It’s disrespectful. Where’s the human compassion? And these are little children,” she said.
…
“If we have to, we’ll file suit,” she said. “When I see something that I feel harms children, I speak up.”
The school claims her allegations are “absurd” and Roni has stated that their reaction to them has mostly been along the lines of “Who are you to tell us not to do this?”
Policies like this make me sick to my stomach. Don’t these kids have enough problems that they don’t have to be branded with the scarlet letter of poverty? Anyone with even a vague memory of being a child is well aware of what that will do to a kid, and the bullying it will likely bring on. Kids will torture another kid for something like that. I can’t even imagine.
In my experience, school officials who actually give a shit about this kind of thing are few and far between. Hopefully another school will be impressed with how much she cares about her students and scoop her up immediately. |
