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Parents rebuked Salt Lake City school board members Tuesday night, accusing them of \u201cbullying\u201d anyone who seeks answers as to\u00a0why the district dumped dozens of kids\u2019 lunches in January.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have no desire to give us the truth,\u201d parent Erica Lukes told board members, who delayed plans to release investigative reports\u00a0into the policies and actions that led a cafeteria worker to throw out the lunches of students with unpaid debts, after the students\u00a0had been served.<\/p>\n
The incident at Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City drew national attention and an apology from the district, and spurred it and\u00a0others to change their policies for handling debts for meals.<\/p>\n
Parents also defended the cafeteria worker, who received a written warning from the district in February and resigned in late August.\u00a0The worker, known as Miss Shirley, has said she was reluctantly complying with her supervisor\u2019s expectations.<\/p>\n
\u201cMiss Shirley ran our Uintah lunchroom as a safe space,\u201d said parent Ashley Hoopes. \u201cThere is a little bit of mourning at the school\u00a0for the loss of this woman.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tribune has agreed not to use Shirley\u2019s last name because of threats that she said had been made against her. She attended\u00a0Tuesday\u2019s school board meeting and cried as parents praised her.<\/p>\n
District spokesman Jason Olsen said the district did not ask her to resign, and did not respond to a question about whether her\u00a0departure was related to the lunch controversy.<\/p>\n
Hoopes accused the district of \u201cpinning all of this on this part-time, 61-year-old lunch worker.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parent Annie Payne said the fault lies higher up in the school\u2019s lunch department, whose accounting software failed to send promised\u00a0e-mail notifications to parents when children\u2019s lunch accounts ran low. Up to 40 Uintah students picked out lunches, then were\u00a0required to surrender the meals to Miss Shirley, who put the food in the trash once a past-due balance was discovered. The children\u00a0received snacks of milk and fruit instead.<\/p>\n
The district has pledged to serve kids full lunches regardless of their parents\u2019 balances and to communicate only with parents about\u00a0past-due accounts.<\/p>\n
District Superintendent McKell Withers has said two employees were ultimately disciplined. The warning letter to Shirley had\u00a0alleged that she provided \u201cfalse\u201d and \u201cmisleading\u201d information to district officials that she had on occasion thrown out kids\u2019 meals\u00a0when she had not, and that she attempted to contact parents with outstanding balances and consulted with the principal when she\u00a0had not.<\/p>\n
Shirley told the Tribune in a March interview that she didn\u2019t think she had lied to her supervisors or given them false information.<\/p>\n
She did acknowledge, however, it was difficult to always notify all parents of their balances because she was short-staffed. She also\u00a0said she did not routinely throw away kids\u2019 lunches when they were behind on balances because she didn\u2019t have the heart to.<\/p>\n
The board commissioned an independent audit of the dumped lunches to \u201crepair the public\u2019s trust,\u201d board president Kristi Swett\u00a0wrote in a February memo. The board planned to review the audit\u2019s findings on Tuesday, but Swett announced that one of the\u00a0reports was \u201cpreliminary\u201d and a final report would be issued in two weeks. Swett said only that \u201ca multi-faceted breakdown of\u00a0communication\u201d led up to the discarding of lunches. The board rejected parents\u2019 request to release the reports at least a day before\u00a0the next meeting to give the public a chance to prepare questions. Withers said the dialogue could continue in subsequent meetings.<\/p>\n
Lukes called the audit\u2019s delay \u201ca very strategic ploy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey formulated a plan to divert attention away from this and thought they could sweep their reports under the carpet,\u201d Lukes said.<\/p>\n
Full disclosure \u201cis the least they owe us,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s a bully mentality, and that\u2019s the way they do business,\u201d she said. \u201cThey did that to Shirley, they did that to the parents who\u00a0speak out, and they did that to our children.\u201d<\/p>\n
LINK TO STORY<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Parents rebuked Salt Lake City school board members Tuesday night, accusing them of \u201cbullying\u201d anyone who seeks answers as to\u00a0why the district dumped dozens of kids\u2019 lunches in January. \u201cYou have no desire to give us the truth,\u201d parent Erica Lukes told board members, who delayed plans to release investigative reports\u00a0into the policies and actions that led a cafeteria worker to throw out the lunches of students with unpaid debts, after the students\u00a0had been … Continue reading