Spain's schools to charge 'packed lunch fee'

: Continued

This woman then passed on a threat to me that if I did not collect him and return him 2 hours later she would call the police and they would bring him home. I told her to go ahead ab¡nd do this. Of course her bluff failed but her bullying tactics are deeply resented by my wife and myself and also some of the other teachers who were arguing against this in the background. They used our son like cannon fodder to get at me and their cowardly actions should not go without investigation. My son did not try to get free food and was prepared to wait until he got home later in the afternoon and enjoy a cooked meal at home. Their final threat to my son was that if he went to school the next day without money for the comedor they would again call the police. Since when has it been a criminal offence to refuse a school meal? Since when has Spain become a facist regime? Since when does the Court of Human Rights and the various EU charters justify such actions ?

It seems that this is no more than a cowardly way for the regional Gov't to tell the Schools that they can have no more state funding, but that they will turn a bind eye if they choose to charge a tax to their pupils directly themselves. A shame when so many schools - like Benitachell - are in danger of losing ther previously good reputation.

My son attends St Maria Magdalena school in Benitachel. We cannot afford either of the two options currently open to us. 1. To pay €22.50 per week for school meals or 2. Return to school at lunchtime and remove our child for two hours and thenm return him for the afternoon session. We cannot afford either of these options. Our fuel bill is over €200 a month just to take him to school and back. To do this 4 times a day making 8 actual trips would cost a terrifying €400 a mnoth. Yesterday we sent him with a substantial sandwich to eat at break time as allowed and at lunch time he walked away from the queue to the Comedor but was stopped and questioned by his class tutor as to why he had no money for the comedor. He was taken to the reception office where an agitated woman called my phone number and when the connection was made she started barking orders at my son who was terrified by her actions. She told him to tell me that I had to go to the school and collect him and take him home !

The central gov't are nothing more than cowardly scum : Why is it always the Kids, the Elderly and the Unwell that have their services cut and are taxed until they have nothing left to give. The country is in the toilet right and proper !

As much as I disagree with this charge, I can kind of understand where the schools are coming from with this. School Dinners are one of the very few 'revenues' that schools can get, and this is being slowly eroded away by fewer and fewer kids paying less and less to take dinners, with Schools having to pay the same in wages (and even more in electric) than they did this time last year, meaning that they are making more of a loss. At the same time the Central Government is forcing the Regional Education Authorities to make even more cuts. What else can they do ? - BUT, as usual, it is the tax-paying public that will be inconvenienced.