Mindy and I went to the school to speak to the principal, and it didn't go as planned.
My original plan was to go in, speak to her in her office, and then get a visitors pass to go into the cafeteria by ourselves to observe the goings on.
She was having none of that, she didn't even speak to us in the office, it was a very hurried give us passes and shuffle us into the cafeteria with her deal.
Every time I tried to speak to her, she interrupted, I had to keep repeating myself, and she kept saying the standard line, "This is the first I've heard of these issues, and if I don't know, I can't do anything to fix it."
She asked where my sons were, I told her where, not pointing them out so other students wouldn't catch on who I was, and even told her look, there are the other kids who my sons have said don't even bother eating lunch because of what happens. They just go in and sit down at a table now, don't bother trying to get a lunch, because of what happens.
None of those kids will need to take any Fenphedra or other diet pills, they just don't even try to eat any more at all because of this whole problem.
She just said "Well that shouldn't happen."
When we walked into the cafeteria though, there was a table to our immediate right where there were 3 security guards, the ones who are supposed to be watching the students, sitting there all eating their lunches and talking to each other.
They didn't even notice she had walked in, so she went over to them tapped on their shoulders, and made them put their food down and go walk the floor, watching the students as they should have been doing.
I asked her if, if you hadn't come in with us, if you hadn't told them to go do their jobs, how long do you think they would have just sat there?
Her reply, "I wonder that myself."
Mindy brought up the rotten milk issue, told her that her son doesn't get milk anymore because it's always spoiled, so the principal sees a student carrying just a milk, and she makes him come over so she can see it.
She shows us the date on it, December 21st, and the both of us practically in harmony said, "We know the dates on them are good, but when you open them up, the milk is spoiled, like it's been sitting out far too long."
I even told her that Mark's milk the day of the incident, had a 3 day expired date on it, and when he opened it, it was definitely rotten.
She started saying that the lunch ladies have strict rules, none of their food products are old or expired, they have standards, and I repeated myself, it was expired by 3 days, rotten milk.
I brought up the frozen turkey sandwich, she again said she doesn't believe it was frozen. I said it was so frozen that Mark tapped it on his plate and the other kids laughed because of the noise it made.
She said she would look into it.
I brought up that it was illegal that he was denied his hot lunch because the lunch lady said he was a troublemaker.
She said the sub-lunches are better quality food, so he did get his lunch, he wasn't denied the right to a quality lunch.
I repeated myself again.
Frozen turkey sandwich, rotten apple, and expired milk, does not sound like a quality lunch to me, and the lunch lady who was ordered to give that to him, wouldn't even look him in the eye when she handed it to him because she knew the quality of food was unacceptable.
I got an eye roll from her, she tried to say something, and I interrupted her and said, he was denied his hot lunch because she said so, she ordered them to give him that food because she deemed him a troublemaker, that is unacceptable to me.
She said she would look into it.
We asked questions about how long the lunch period is, how long they get to eat, and how many security guards are there to watch that many students.
There are over 500 students per lunch period, there are 3 lunch periods, and only 3 security guards who have to watch that many students for 3 hours each day.
They can't possibly watch them all, if they turn their backs to look at one lunch line, stuff can happen in another lunch line, and the way they have it set up, the lines are really far apart from each other, so you have one guard trying to watch section A of his assigned line and his assigned part of the cafeteria, and another one to section B, his assigned line and his assigned part of the cafeteria, and another one to section C, his assigned line and his assigned part of the cafeteria, all spread out across this enormous cafeteria.
And the fact that when we walked in, they were all sitting down eating their lunches and talking to each other, does not give me any confidence that they actually watch the students at any point during the 3 hour long lunch periods on any day of the week.
If these 3 guards are assigned lunch duty daily, they should be allowed to eat their lunches before student lunch periods even begin, not have to try and eat while they are also supposed to be providing security.
We asked if any teachers have lunch duty like they do at all of the elementary schools do, and she said no, that when the teachers negotiated their contracts, they negotiated and won duty free lunch periods.
That means the teachers have it in their contracts that they do not ever have to have lunch duty supervising any students.
Gee, I wonder why they asked for and negotiated that into their contracts. *eye roll*
Could it be because they know it's a total pain in the ass?
I said to the principal, when I heal up from my surgeries, maybe they would be interested in parent volunteers to help provide supervision during lunch.
More adults in there making a presence, is obviously needed, and also to possibly make the 300 pound security guards get off of their asses.
She gave me a look I can only describe as she thinks I must be crazy.
She asked if she could speak to my sons about what goes on, I said yes, but not in the cafeteria, and not in their classes, because the classes they are in are with the same students they have lunch with and are the bullies.
She said she would have their teacher let them come speak to her privately, no one would know why, and I cautioned her about the retaliation they could face if the bullies found out.
She assured me that no one would know why she was speaking to them.
uh huh, I totally trust her on that. *eye roll*
She also said that she would speak to their teacher about letting them out of class early so they could get to the cafeteria early so they could always get their lunch.
I said that's all fine and good, but again, it's not just my kids.
Look at the other kids they sit with, a whole group of them, and none of them are eating lunch because of what happens.
She pointed out that the lines had stopped, that any of those boys could go get lunch now that the line was gone, and I said yes, they can, but waiting to get it and then having what, 5-10 minutes to inhale their food is not ok.
Mindy also said something about the kids inhaling their food.
Every single kid in that whole room, was eating like it was their last meal because of how little time they have to actually eat, they were all just sucking it down.
At this point I had to get out of the cafeteria.
It was so hot in there, and I have over heating issues anyway due to my pain meds, so I went outside to the open air hallways.
The whole school is open, the hallways open up directly to the outside, and that was nother thing Mindy and I noticed as we were walking in and out of the school.
There were many, many students just wandering around outside, not even in the hallways, but outside on the grass, in the parking lots, the driveways, and not a single security guard in sight to tell them to get to class.
Because of how close I live to the school, I am always seeing kids in the mid-mornings, walking down my street, obviously coming from the school.
Students can just walk off campus whenever they want to, and no one ever says anything about it.
When Mindy and the principal came out to the hallway, she said, "There you saw it for yourself, no one was doing anything today", I said because you were in there and you made the security guards get up and do their job. That doesn't happen every single day.
She said she would look into it all, all of our complaints and questions, and if we had any other issues, to not hesitate to call her.
I thanked her for her time and said I would be contacting her again, especially if my sons are retaliated against in any way for speaking with her.
End of visit, and we left.
I seriously doubt she's going to look into anything at all, I doubt that anything at all is going to be done about any of it, so every day, I'll be asking how the lunch periods went, and I'll be making a weekly or daily call to her if I have to, to alert her to any serious or the ongoing problems during lunch.
It seriously pissed me off that she'll let my kids go to lunch way early so they can eat, but that does not solve the problem for all of the other students in any of the other lunch periods.
Mindy's son sees it happen in his too, so yeah sure, letting my kids go eat early is great, but it doesn't fix the problem at any other lunch period for any other kid.
There will still be kids sitting with my sons at that table, not eating because of the hassles involved with getting in the lunch line.
for their Xbox360.
, $117.99, not a bad price, just like the teens monitor.
, was on sale for $35.24, down from $195.00.
, was on sale for $39.99, down from $129.00.
is my for fun item, not on sale, but not a bad price at $69.99.
that I got at a wickedly good sale price, ($128.88) and I felt tremendous guilt spending that much money on something for myself, so because A) I suck at taking pictures and B) I could never, ever, in a million years 
, I will stick to taking just mediocre pictures of our cats, my kids, and other weird and random stuff I feel like taking a picture of.
, another Rankin Bass classic that hardly ever gets aired on tv anymore.
, or 
, or some Tiger Wood's or some other Cobra golf, or some baseball games, and I always have to say, no, but thank you, not those kinds of games.
type, and the 
type.
is a true story written by Doreen Orion about her and her husband's journey across the country in a converted bus.