Maybe if more schools gave kids more than 20 minutes to eat, this wouldn't have been an issue in the first place.

I've never needed more than 20 minutes to eat anyways. Of course, I lived with two gluttonous brothers, my garbage-disposal father, and my poor starving mother... she just wasn't fast enough. I kid. She was a real threat too. If I didn't eat fast, I didn't eat.

@Ghede: You arent considering the 10+ min some kids have to wait in line to get their lunch. Not everyone brings a bagged lunch.

HAH i love it! Only in NJ would you get that. Readington is a pretty well to do area in NJ too. Wouldn't be surprised if some lawyer isn't brought in over it.

As a up and coming teacher i would reward students who did this out of protest, it's unfair to students who have to wait in line for 15 mins for lunch only to get 5 minutes to woof down some horribly prepared food.

Next time they should pay with hundred dollar bills.

A rather cruel joke, I must admit. But then a short lunch break is a cruel joke in and by itself (ask any New York City public high school student trying to get food in a cafeteria line within 30 minutes). And two days of detention over paying in pennies?

What's next? A day of hard labor for paying a $2 debt with a genuine $100 bill?

Those kids are too happy in that picture and the food looks overly fresh. Where do you guys find these pictures?

Also by the way I'm not sure why the school is punishing the kids since they paid in Legal Tender and not in Monopoly Money.

@Ghede: it's not about how much time it takes you to eat it, it's about how long those damn lunch lines are. at my school it takes me a good 20 minutes standing in line if i'm not the first person there, and my lunch is only 30 minutes long, minus the time it takes me to walk there from the other side of the campus. so in reality most kids only have about 5 minutes to eat a full lunch. most of the time the long lines are a result of the fact that the cafeteria workers are very incompetent and can't serve the food fast enough or work a cash register quickly.

20 minutes lunches? Wow, that's unbearably short.

It's U.S. currency. Are they going to make a rule that you can't use pennies?

@parad0x360: I agree. I know that at my school, it takes at least 10 minutes to get lunch, even though we have 3 lunch lines. Also, not everyone brings a lunch.
I don't think it would kill anyone to give those kids a bit longer lunch period.

Wow, we sure don't want to allow our kids to question authority. The school should have used this as an educational moment to teach kids about the process to make appeals, how to correctly petition authorities but rather, they chose to punish the behavior making one believe that the school system is more of a "reward/punish" institution rather than an learning institution.

Hell, that's only a few minutes longer then basic training.

Those kids should sue the school- isn't a penny legal tender for all debts public and private? I'm sure there's something on the books that would allow them to take action.

WTF. Pennies is still legal tender in this country. While it is quite disrespect to pay in that amount especially for a school lunch, administrators had NO right to give these kids detention. Unless the country abolished pennies, it's still money and they have to accept it. I wouldn't be surprised if I saw a lawsuit about this issue because after all, we do live in the United States.

Students definitely need a longer lunch time. But using pennies to pay is not the right way to get that. It only inconveniences the cafeteria workers, who have a hard enough job as it is, and they have no control over how long the lunch period is anyway.

A good way to go about it would be to save all your leftovers for a week, or a month, or whatever, dump them into a sealed box, then deliver it to the school board with a note that says "We don't have enough time to eat an adequate lunch."

Did you ever stop to think why they only get 20 minutes?

In many schools, overcrowding and small cafeterias mean that students have to eat in shifts.

But the most likely reason is that with all the pressure from "No Child Left Behind," time can't be wasted on frivolous pursuits such as lunch, much less recess.

*Fondly remembers the 45 minute lunch and recess/free-time.

Absolutely rediculous. Detention for using pennies? Whoever administered this punishment should be fired. Usually I side with the staff when students whine about this or that, but this is just obsurd. I wish I was on their schoolboard.

FYI. buying something is not a dept. That is a huge missconception. A store can legally tell you they will not accept a certain denomination of legal tender. As far as the detention is concerned, the school needs to take a damn chill pill.

Eating fast is very unhealthy. Chewing your food properly is the first step in proper digestion, and proper health.

Also, our fast paced fast food lifestyle is considered the difference between America and countries like France where they enjoy a meal. It is part of an important ritual. The enjoyment of a good meal is representative of a less stressful ad healthy lifestyle. The French don't have super healthy diets, but it may be the fact that they take time to enjoy food that is one key to living a longer healthier life.

shifts are ok for lunches, but it should be 30 minutes.
By comparison, US Air Force regulations in basic training mandate a minimum of 10 minutes eating time. With coming to and from and waiting in line, I doubt they even get that (note: in actual basic training, the 10 minutes rarely happens)

One example: "Local administrators say they are concerned about nutrition but have to worry about federal and state education reforms, which require more and more learning every school day. They admit that as a result, lunch and recess time for children is being squeezed.......the federal No Child Left Behind act are putting pressure on schools to find the time to meet their requirements."

[www.ecnnews.com]

I'd love to see this make the national news when a lawsuit is brought because of it. I have a second grader who comes home and eats a "second lunch" because she didn't get enough time to eat hers in school.

@etho:

And, actually, there's usually laws saying that kids have to be in class for a certain number of hours each day. I wonder if they'd really want more time to eat if it meant the school day was an hour longer.

Basically, these kids were just being brats, except they were being self-righteous brats, which is even more obnoxious. I see nothing wrong with giving them detention.

@arstal:
Well, it doesn't say anywhere that they weren't allowed to buy lunch with the pennies, just that they received detention for doing so. Nobody was claiming it was illegal, or refusing to accept it, just that it was disruptive and disrespectful, which it certainly was, so I don't think there's any way the kids could sue.

@FessLove: I agree, why is it wrong to pay with actual MONEY?

The kids are directing their anger at the wrong source. It's not the lunch ladies, the school or even the district. It's state and federal pressures to cram more into the school day and lunch is the only thing left to cut. How about they protest outside the state capital or do a letter carpet-bomb to the Education Department?

I remember back in the day if you werent near the beginning of the lunchline, then you spent half your lunchtime waitng in that line. One year,because my class before lunchtime was all the way at the other end of the school, I ended up having to change classes to one that was nearer the lunchroom otherwise i would probably get 6 minutes to eat my lunch.

I say kudos to the kids who actually thought this up. It was a nice way to make a point. BOO on the uptight principal who overreacted.

I didn't know there were still schools that let you simply buy a meal, I thought they were all on card-based token systems.

I find it hard to believe that even 10 minutes isn't enough time to eat.

I mean, I definitely understand how it might not be ideal, but it's not as if kids are going hungry because they only have 10 minutes. It's school, lots of aspects of it sucks. Deal, crybabies.

@spamtasticus: Yes similar to, "No bills over $20," often seen at fast food joints.

Still I hate to bound exchanges of tender for goods/services but placing, "No coins under $0.25," or the like.

Good for the kids! Man, they deserve an award for that. And maybe some compensation for strolling into "1984" every weekday.

I'm a middle school assistant principal, and I'm all for what these kids did. Shouldn't we be encouraging nonviolent, creative ways to protest problems? I mean, all things considered, this was so effective it got nationally noticed, which is less than I can say for most professional protesters and activists... as for calling them 'self-righteous brats'? I'd reserve that for when they start really being disrespectful over the point.

Bring your freakin' lunch, kids.

My old school has a prepay card type thing now. My sister had to use it where they don't accept money in the regular school lunch line. If you want to use money then you go to the a la carte or vending machines.

They are being punished for a prank, not merely for using pennies. It's one thing if you use a few pennies as part of your payment, but these kids went of their way to bring in loads of pennies on purpose to create a disturbance.

Still, it was a clever protest for the kids. Rather than giving detention, the school should have turned the event into an opportunity to study examples of successful nonviolent protests in history. Make the kids write essays -- children always see that as a punishment.

I don't know how they can legally do this. Pennies are legal tender, and you have the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Isn't the school, as a public institution, an arm of government?

Or are they using the doublespeak that's all too common these days of "yes, you can do it but we don't have to like it"?

Also by the way I'm not sure why the school is punishing the kids since they paid in Legal Tender and not in Monopoly Money.

Legal tender is only used in the context that it MUST be accepted by a creditor to settle a debt. The lunch lady is not a creditor, so she is entitled to refuse pennies if they decide to enact such a policy.

High schools in Canada get an hour to eat lunch, and I'm quite pleased with this setup.

Pennies are indeed legal tender. If the cafeteria did not accept them, that would be a completely different issue. But they DID accept the pennies. They just decided to give the students detention for causing an unnecessary disturbance in the process.

It's not as though the police were called or the kids were arrested. Detention is an disciplinary action well within the bounds of the school's authority. No one said what the kids did was illegal, just disruptive.

Both entities were well within their rights to do what they did.

Schools do this all the time. Students find a way to creatively protest anything and they start handing out detentions and/or suspensions.

Even if you find a way to make a statement without breaking any rule, the school just tells you that you are in the wrong anyway. (and you are going to be punished)

@FessLove: "Absolutely rediculous. Detention for using pennies? Whoever administered this punishment should be fired. Usually I side with the staff when students whine about this or that, but this is just obsurd. I wish I was on their schoolboard."

Erm, damn. Maybe you need to double check how to spell words like ridiculous and absurd before you start applying to sit on school boards...

Anyway, it's not so ridiculous. Their actions, regardless of the reasons behind them, did cause disruption and affected the study of other kids (the ones waiting in line behind them). These actions warrant detention under school rules. So detention was gives.

"It's not fair!". Welcome to life. I hope that other students protest the detention and back the original cause, but the fact is that change takes sacrifice and it'll take more than a longer line than normal at the lunch queue one day to change the school's policies. Realistically, that's all they achieve and may result in the school switching to cards rather than actually change their break rules.

Must be a slow consumer-related news day.

So what is the solution to the short lunch period? Add 20 minuntes to the school day and make lunch 40 minutes? Would that work for the students? How about the teachers?

If the students are mature enough to protest, they should have proposed a resolution as well.

Don't any of the people who post comments here actually read the full article?! The kids freely admit that they never spoke up about the short lunch period before going on to the penny prank. I'm all for non-violent protest when it's called for, but this ("At first it started out as a joke, then everyone else started saying we're protesting against like how short our lunch is") sounds much more like a prank that got rationalized as a "protest."

And that last kid quoted in the article--"There was no rule in the rulebook about it. It was just unfair. It's U.S. currency"--yeah, sounds like you're going to make a fine citizen one day... the kind that belittles waiters and mistreats anyone you perceive as "beneath" you.

@zouxou: The kids are protesting at the center of the problem. To call it disrespectful to the staff is a crappy ploy by the school administration to line up support for itself by claiming to champion the workers.

Stopping by an office supply store to get a couple of cheap plastic tubes to count and wrap the coins would make the protest much more inconvenient for the kids than the staff and the action would die a natural death as people got tired of lugging all those pennies to school. But why take a rational step when a show of force is what is obviously called for? "Bring it on," as Mr. Bush says. Maybe we can arrest the kids for numismatistic threatening.

I guess it is a changed world. We no longer encourage kids to defend their rights. As a senior citizen, I am amazed that people are not in the streets protesting the war in Iraq and the removal of their personal freedoms by the Bush administration. Unfortunately, if my legs were good enough to march, I would probably forget where I was going and get lost.

Power to the Penny!

Good job Kids! I love it!

Reminds me of the time me and a few friends organized a walkout because we didn't get any snow days one year. Oh... rich, white, suburban kids; how I love 'em.

That's hilarious. I would totally reward my kid for pulling this off...maybe see if we could get an article in the local paper with a nice picture of the detention-giver looking like he has a stick up his ass.

Geez, these guys have no sense of humor these days.

I did that when I was a kid once - used to have a lunchlady who would pretty much verbally abuse you if you didn't have your 50 cents out and ready at the end of the line. So one day I took a roll of pennies with me and cracked it open into her hand.

She never gave me a hard time again. And I didn't get detention.

when my daughters were in elemtary school, it started at 9:00 and their lunch was at 10:30 WTF? who can eat lunch at 10:30. Whenever they had an hour delay for snow or something, their first period would be lunch. The school I went to for elementary school didn't have a cafeteria, so everybody brought their lunch, when you got done, you went out for recess. I know they can't do that because of free/reduced lunches but geez 20 minutes is way too short. Extend the school day by 10 minutes to give them some extra time. For most elemtary and middle students it would just be 10 less minutes for the kids to be left unsupervised. I guess that would mess up the bus schedules, but then again another reason to not bus kids....@GhettoGodfather:

I can't believe so many people are calling this ridiculous, I'm so proud of these little protesters! It's the lunchroom equivalent of a sit-in. Go baby hippies, go!

I do my student teaching in a class that comes in immediately after lunch. The teacher allows them to bring in their lunch if they didn't have time to eat it, and hang out for a few minutes. The class is an hour and a half, and the short break at the beginning seems to keep the kids calm for the rest of the period.

@PeanutButter:

I suppose a rule against using cents wouldn't be any different than cities that have enacted ordinances to prevent people from paying fines/tickets in cents.

@aphexbr:At the school my kids went to in Phoenix, you bought tickets for lunch 2 weeks in advance, which the school kept track of, and you bought in the morning before school started, no change needed...might not be a bad idea..