> 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.
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.