Embarrassed Kindergartener is Forced to Return Hot Meal After Cafeteria Worker Sees Her Lunch Account Balance

Anya Howard is just six years old. And as a kindergartener at Southwest Elementary School in Indiana, her parents are able to put lunch money in an account that comes out each time she purchases a meal.

Well on one Friday afternoon, Anya was just going about her normal lunch routine when she was purchased a hot tray of food at the cafeteria. But on this particular day, she was told she didn’t have enough money in her account to pay for it.

Anya was then forced walk all the way to the back of the lunch line—past many of her classmates—to get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead. And all of her friends laughed at her.

“They were laughing at us, and they got more food than us,” Anya said.

It was so bad that her grandfather, Dwight Howard, refers to it as the “cafeteria walk of shame.”

“When she was talking to me about it, she was more than ‘sad,'” he said, adding that he wants the policy for something like this to be changed. “I mean, that’s embarrassing for a little 6-year-old.”

The meal that Anya purchased was $2.25, but she only had 10 cents left in her account. However her family says that they weren’t notified of the low funds and would’ve been happy to replenish it.

But. Kent DeKoninck, the Greenwood Community Schools superintendent says that parents receive payment reminders when their child’s lunch accounts have about $5 remaining in it.

“It is not an uncommon occurrence for multiple students to be served the alternate lunch on any given day,” DeKoninck said. “Any time this happens, our staff looks to handle all of these as discreetly as possible.”

What do you think of this school’s policy and how Anya’s situation was handled? Have you ever run into anything like this with your own kids?