There should never be any judgement regarding a child's financial situation during the school day.
The place where I grew up handled this in the best possible way: Every kid got a lunch if they went through the lunch line, without exception. The school system simply kept track of which students got a meal, and at the end of the month, they'd either mail a bill or it would be covered through the free lunch program.
Under this system, there was no opportunity for students or staff to pass judgement on students for their financial situation.
the issue here is that how is it determined who is eligible for the free lunch program after the fact? The parents are too negligent to sign up, their account goes into arrears and the kid ends up skipping the line out of fear getting punished for it. Parents have to sign up and too many don't give a crap
> and the kid ends up skipping the line out of fear getting punished for it.
No, as I said above, every kid got a lunch without exception. The record keeping was unidirectional. The lunch line tallied the quantity of lunches that were handed out to each student and reported this to the district, but the district did not report back anything about paying bills to anyone at the school. Nobody in the lunch room knew anything about the finances of any student. They were tasked only with handing out lunches.
> Parents have to sign up and too many don't give a crap
This is better to make a problem of the district's finance department, not the individual school. They can solve this by mailing bills to parents and/or information about signing up for lunch programs. This is not a problem to solve by holding a child's lunch hostage.
The place where I grew up handled this in the best possible way: Every kid got a lunch if they went through the lunch line, without exception. The school system simply kept track of which students got a meal, and at the end of the month, they'd either mail a bill or it would be covered through the free lunch program.
Under this system, there was no opportunity for students or staff to pass judgement on students for their financial situation.