29 Readington Middle School students earned two days detention after paying for their lunch with pennies. School administrators took the penny treatment a sign of disrespect towards cafeteria workers, who eventually collected 5,800 pennies.
“At first it started out as a joke, then everyone else started saying we’re protesting against like how short our lunch is,” student Alyssa Concannon said.Several lunch ladies who had to do the counting didn’t think it was funny, even though some of the students put the coins in rolls. They’re not authorized to put in their two cents but school officials say they felt disrespected and other students didn’t get to eat lunch.
“There are ways to express yourself that are not disruptive to other kids and disrespectful to staff,” said Readington Superintendent of Schools Dr. Jorden Schiff.
Eighth grader Jenny Hunt said in hindsight, the prank may have been a bad idea.
“Maybe we should have thought before we did it,” Hunt said.
Student Sarah Henschel added: “There was no rule in the rulebook about it. It was just unfair. It’s U.S. currency.”
Students Punished After Buying Lunch With Pennies [CBS]
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@Arrngrim: Negative, I definitely intended “capital punishment”, we have enough bad apples in this world, we need to weed them out of the gene pool as early as possible.
Let’s get specific here. What sorts of actions would merit the death penalty in a typical middle school? And what form of capital punishment should be used: electric chair? lethal injection? Will there be due process, or should the principal just carry a revolver around with him? (Well OK, in my middle school it would have been the assistant principal.)
Definitely not the neglectful parent, hell, I’d whip my kid if he came home proudly stating he had caused some poor cafeteria worker grief like this.
But not kill him? OK, that establishes some boundaries at least. What if he caused his teacher grief, or the principal?
Next time you are in line at a store, and you are forced to wait 20 minutes because someone decides to write a check (oh wait, the machine denied it), use a card (oh wait, the machine denied it), just a sec, I’ll dig through my purse for some change. And they drop $5 in pennies and pay with that. You, as a consumer on your personal time, are forced to endure 20 minutes of waiting thanks to the idiocy of someone else.
Would the death penalty be appropriate in this case too?
For those of you who are saying that lunch workers are underpaid, in the school district I work at they make 13.75/hr.
Our lunches are combined with recess, and the total time for each grade is 25 minutes. I see so many kids throwing their food away because their bell has already rung. It’s so sad. Many of the kids come in after school and still have their lunches and eat them then. It’s no wonder we have so many hyperactive kids- they have to choose between food and play time.
Good for the kids. At my middle school, the line was routinely longer than the actual lunch period due to massive overcrowding.
High school wasn’t a lot better, with a 20-25 minute line. Yes, you can scarf food down that fast, but it’s unhealthy. Lunch is, aside from a bit of fuel, a time for a quick mental recharge. Everyone here knows that the 30 minute break can make a world of difference when you’re dropping, and these kids aren’t getting it.
Ha, wow. Is this school truly serious? I mean, I can understand getting frustrated with lunch time and “protesting” but the school literally had no right to bring these kids into detention. First off, a penny is a perfectly good U.S. currency, albeit a currency nobody wants to use. Second off, maybe you should give them lunch hours like back in the day. I’m not old, in fact I am still in school. But I remember when I was in elementary school and we had 45 minute lunches and 30 minute recess. You’d think they’d carry on this tradition but apparently we are not educating our children enough. That should be evident in the 20 minutes that students get today to eat lunch…
I support the students, but this wasn’t the right way to do it. Angry letters get the job done better nowadays. Or, of course, you could just complain to the “higher ups.”
The kids have been pardoned and no detentions will be seeervd unless their parents tell the schoool to do otherwise for their own kids.
[www.boston.com]
I paid for my bus fares with pennies for about 6 months when I was in high school.I think the fare was like $1.25… My Dad had a suitcase full of them- it was a great way to get rid of them. I had them all bagged up everyday. The bus driver didn’t mind after I explained…
Our school has a policy – kids can only pay for their lunches by using the pin pad system and parents have to deposit money into that account with a personal check. But there was a time when the school refused to sell my son his lunch because he had a Canadian quarter. We live near the border, so having Canadian quarters on hand isn’t unusual. After that, he stopped getting lunch at school.
I do agree with the students though. My own two kids get 20 minutes for lunch. This time includes the time it takes them to get to the lunch room, time spent in line, and then clean up time. All students are responsible for wiping down their tables and picking up in their area before they may leave. Clean up usually takes five minutes to get approval and get the job done. Give another five minutes to get from the upstairs classrooms to the downstairs cafeteria. In the end, they have about ten minutes to eat. I think it’s a real shame and also is one of the leading reasons kids have poor eating habits – they’ve been programmed to rush through their meal.
@chiieddy: Just read the AP story, seems that the news blew the “event” out of proportion, imagine that….
“In his e-mail, Schiff said the students described their actions as a prank and that news reports inaccurately called it a protest.”
My high school only had twenty minutes. They tried to trick you into thinking it was thirty because the 5 minute bell for going to and from classes was before and after it.
It’s a federal offense to disrupt a school/classroom activities in any fashion. What these kids did was take their already short lunch and make it even shorter by paying with pennies. Many more kids didn’t receive a lunch, or had to miss the next class to eat lunch, than any other previous day.
They should be applauded to voicing their opinions in a nonviolent way, but detention seems to be a rational decision here. This was a very disruptive way to address the situation that only made matters much worse on that day.
@MustyBuckets: First, the lunch ladies don’t make up the times and the school still got paid. Bringing your own food and not giving any money along with talking to the administrators would have been better.
Second: you’re siding with middle school kids….get out of here.
@Arrngrim:
I would like to nominate this post for the dumbest post of the year award. Let’s compare young school children to army life. Are you freakin kidding me? They should be grateful to have food? Lol. Why don’t we just execute them while we are at it? I have been doing volunteer consumer advocacy work for years. Americans, for the most part, are apathetic and lazy and allow themselves to be run over by big business. These children took a non violent approach to a problem that is prevalent in schools and tried to do something about it. Do you really think the governor would give a crap about a kid’s petition? I think not. Kudos to them for trying to make a change.
The principal rescinded the detention because of the bad publicity. Though he said if the parents still want the kids to have detention, he’ll honor their wishes.
[ap.google.com]
“…and other students didn’t get to eat lunch.”
What! I don’t care what the reason is, EVERY student should be given time to eat lunch. I’m betting this violated a federal or state law.
If they were TRULY intelligent, they would have gotten petitions and taken this to the gov’t. Instead, they gave some poor, underpaid workers a bunch of grief. In my book, that equates to a belt on the bottom.
I’m sorry, as someone who actually did this in his senior year of high school, it just doesn’t work.
we organized a huge petition, got more then half the school, (yes, HALF THE SCHOOL), only to present it to the principle and have him throw it away, right in front of us.
it wasn’t even over something hard to change, we were protesting the entire sophomore class being punished for the misdeeds of one child.
@Arrngrim: Capital punishment, you say. Off with their heads!
Schools operate In loco parentis which is latin for “in place of the parent” (at least they used to). Schools are not democratic and are not meant to be. They should, however, be compassionate, much like a parent should be. I know if I had done some stunt like this to my parent, being sent to my room was the least of my concerns.
While the kids did have a real reason to complain about their short lunch periods, they should have vocalized about it first.
In the back of my mind, I can’t help but feel that this is a prank that ended up being called a protest once the judgements started dropping down on them.
If I was the parent of one of those kids, I”d tell the administration the kid wasn’t serving a detention, and if you want to suspend him, do so. I’ll then see you in court.
I’d do that respectfully, but let them know that no, this isn’t right, and I”m not going to reinforce anti-educational behavior.
That’s just funny.
I am infuriated about this first Apple not accepting cash for an iphone purchase and now a school not accepting pennies as payment, WTF is going on with this country is it unamerican to not accept us currency as payment for anything.?
@wilmawonker: I know, right, go little hippies.
Honestly, I think they should do away with the penny, don’t ya know it cost $134 mil to make $80 million worth of pennies?
@Arrngrim: Uh, you mean Corporal Punishment… It’s more of a learning experience than capital punishment…
And I agree with you!
Attaboy. Take those precocious, idealistic minds and crush the doe-eyed youngsters’ spirits underfoot. Bra. VO!
If only the school administrators would have read Consumerist’s Ban The Penny story posted here mere days ago…
Humble suggestion. Make the administrators and teachers sidle up in line with the students, gather the same lunch and eat it within the same time constraints.
Keep it up until either the system works (ha ha) or the rules are changed.
Any big person pulling rank/taking cuts has to write on blackboard, “I am such a tool. I am such a tool…” 1,000 times.
Pennies are legal tender. You can’t not take them, unless you want a stack of treasury agents and a massive fine. However unwrapped pennies in excess of 25 are not legal tender. As for being disruptive, well that is the point of civil disobedience. Once the cafeteria decided to accept the pennies, it was on them. They didn’t have to make kids wait while they counted them, and they are under no obligation to count them. Granted they SHOULD count them, but that’s on them, not the kids. As for the kids who did not get to eat because of the line, well the school is obligated to do something so they can eat. If I were the parent of one of those kids I might be inclined to take legal action, but only after I’ attempted more gentle means of persuasion. PTA meetings, school board meetings, etc. All in all the prank / protest was a good idea, and the school played right into their hands. Finally 20 minutes might be enough time for some people to choke down some horribly prepared glop, but probably not enough to acquire it too. The school should make a lunch period of a more reasonable length, install another cashier line, and maybe install machines to dispense some food like drinks and so forth to minimize the number of kids on the lines.
It may be US currency and legal tender, but the little brats deserve a kick in the ass for being pricks. Crap like this is what starts them on the road to being the selfish adults they will become.
It’s one thing to get to school and realize all you have is a pocket full of change to pay with, but to plan to be an inconvenient jerk is another thing.
The adverserial relationship between teachers, administrators, and students never ceases to be amazing. Occasionally children do have valid complaints that the adults around them should pay attention to. Creative protests like the following show that kids are willing to play by the rules, but feel strongly enough to make a stand.
Instead of sqaushing their voice, give them a forum that allows them to be heard.
Then again, some people see school as an institution, where it instills “discipline” to accept the cold, harsh realities of things to come. It works very hard to teach kids into standing back and accept when their teachers listen to student’s problems and “take it seriously.”
They should be expelled and barred from attending college and probably sent to military school. They should also retroactively fail previous grade levels they have already passed.
Judging from the writing, many of the people here spent too much time in line and not enough in English class.
@KogeLiz: “This kid didn’t even know WHY she was handing the staff pennies… she just did it along with everyone else.”
Happens with many protests. Recall that Rosa Parks sat down in the front of the bus simply because she was tired. Things got “out of hand” because of how authorities handled that “uppity” situation…
But they didn’t speak up! They didn’t protest, and the students admit they didn’t say anything to the school staff before their little prank. And it wasn’t a protest – people started saying it was, and it snowballed. Middle schoolers, like all kids, will eventually find SOMETHING to gripe about. They should’ve used normal methods of communication that are not disruptive to staff, before launching any kind of physical protest. I think it is disrespectful to make cafeteria staff cound the pennies. It doesn’t matter that it was legal tender – it holds up the line, and that was against what their little effort was about. Instead of protesting, how about finding methods of making the lunch process faster?
I was listening to a radio show that was talking about this incident. Someone called up and said that they staged a similar prank at their high school. The Principal was actually smart, and instead of creating a big deal out of it, he simply added a second teller line for the kids paying with pennies. That way, they were only delaying themselves. That takes all the fun out of it. This is the quickest, easiest, and most effective way to deal with these kids.
Firstly I didn’t know there were any schools that still took cash. Mine converted to a card system in 1991.
I admire these kids for having an organized non violent protest. If other students did not get to eat their lunch I would say that proves their point.
Bravo to the kids and BOO to the over reactive superintendent.
@Trai_Dep:
Hahahahahaha…. aaaahhhhaahahahahahah….. hahah….. ha…heh….
That’s a good one. My administrators would LOVE to get twenty minutes every day during which they can hang out, sit down, eat lunch, and not worry about anything else. Heck, most of the teachers would feel lucky to get twenty uninterrupted minutes in which to eat and relax.
@ClayS:
Actually, I see very few examples of protesters presenting clear and well-thought-out, viable resolutions for the issues they are protesting. I think a protest is a good start, and as many people have pointed out, it is our responsibility as adults to teach these kids how to use their creativity in appropriate ways to voice their opinions.
@Galls:
I find it interesting that your entire post consisted of both common and uncommon grammatical missteps.
@witeowl: You raise an excellent point. I shouldn’t have included teachers in the same grouping as insanely vindictive school administrators. My bad. Sorry!
I’m assuming it’s No Child Left Behind that’s behind this absurdity?
Lunch was 75 minutes at my highschool, the same length as a class because we had to eat in shifts. 75 minutes damn that was long.
I applaud the kids, but wouldn’t the solution be (I didn’t read all the replies, forgive me if someone said this) to get a change counting machine? I have bought one for my daughter for like 10 dollars before. What if the kids mom only HAS pennies that day…suspension?
And I always brought my lunch, when you buy it at school you are in line for 75-80% of your lunchtime. That’s just wrong. But to be honest, the kids shouldn’t be eating the poison they serve there anyhow.
@Arrngrim: if they couldn’t eat, because serving these kids took too long, that is not a problem for these kids to deal with. The school has a responsibility to give those kids at the end of the line enough time.
Your argument for the line at a store doesn’t make much sense, either. The store will remain open for you to pay and leave, and relies upon you to operate. The school is paid for by taxes, and exists to serve the students and tax payers.
When I didn’t have time to finish eating, I ate anyway, and went to class late. However, I didn’t start off at public schools, so my perspective is based on have seven years of being treated like a student, before four years of being treated like cattle. I still regret not dropping out sooner (community college FTW).
@timmus:
Then why didn’t they just refuse to take the pennies? Problem solved.
I think this is really creative and shows these kids were thinking, which seems to be rare for a lot of kids these days.
Whether the school likes it or not the kids DID NOT break any rules, how can you punish a child for doing something that is not technically wrong?
Guess all kids should just turn into sheep. No need for free thinking it’s so overrated!
The school missed an opportunity to use this as an educational tool. That’s a shame.
The short lunches are one of the worst things ever conceived. Back at my high school, we only had thirty minutes for lunch, and [as many commenters before me have pointed out] the majority of this time was spent waiting for the food itself.
Brown-bag lunchers of the world unite!
those children deserve the detention for using the word “like” extra grammatically
I’d be proud of my kid if they pulled a stunt like this. Schoo lunches are way too short anyways. We got 25 minutes when I was in school! 25 minutes! How is that even healthy to wait in line for 10 to 15 minutes, cram down your lunch in 10 minutes, then have to go straight back to class – more often than not with indigestion.