SELINSGROVE — The superintendent of Selinsgrove schools said Friday that a week-old policy that denied lunch to students who lacked money has been rescinded.
“It was poor administration judgment,” Frederick Johnson said in apologizing and assuming full blame for an administrative decision that resulted in a 12-year-old Port Trevorton boy going hungry on Monday.
“There are no excuses.”
The school district will immediately return to its previous policy, Johnson said.
“We’re going back to where we were,” he said. “It was a mistake.”
The policy that took effect Monday did not allow lunches at the middle and high school levels to be purchased on credit. If a student didn’t have money to pay, he or she would not eat. The 12-year-old son of Lisa Gaugler, of Port Trevorton, had his tray taken away and the food thrown in the trash by a cafeteria worker because he did not have enough money in his account to pay for it.
“This is ultimately my fault, nobody else’s,” Johnson said, saying that the school board or anyone else is culpable.
In a letter posted on the district Web site, Johnson apologizes to families and students, the school board and the Selinsgrove community for the error in judgment.
“This decision was a community embarrassment brought on by this administrative decision,” he wrote. “The lunch worker involved shares no culpability in this matter and was only following administrative directives.”
Gaugler said she is satisfied with the decision.
“I would like to thank The Daily Item for their coverage of the story,” she said. “It is from the public’s awareness of the situation that I believe put pressure on the administration to rethink its policies.”
“I do regret that the new lunch policy was allowed to be implemented in the first place, but also fully accept Dr. Johnson’s apologies and agree with him that it is time to move forward.”
-- E-mail comments to tpursell@dailyitem.com
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