Limiting cafeteria purchases

[Anonymous]

First things first - no need to shame me for having my kids buy school lunch. I just don't care what you think and as a two parent working household, this makes my family's life easier.

Now on to my question - is it possible to ask the cafeteria to limit my child's purchases to lunch only (like not the $1 cookie, the $1 juice, etc.)?

[Anonymous]

No. They won’t parent for you.

[Anonymous]

Yes I had to do that for my son who was buying all sorts of extras. I called the school one morning and asked to speak to the cafeteria manager.

My ES kids get the school lunch almost everyday.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes I had to do that for my son who was buying all sorts of extras. I called the school one morning and asked to speak to the cafeteria manager.

My ES kids get the school lunch almost everyday.

Thank you. I may have to do this if our most recent discussion with my child does not yield good results!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. They won’t parent for you.

Oh look, somebody judging me!! Surprise, surprise!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. They won’t parent for you.

Oh look, somebody judging me!! Surprise, surprise!!

Some people are just nasty when they can be anonymous. Imagine what their life must be like for them to want to act that way online. Sad.

[Anonymous]

I did this for one my kids in Elementary school at FCPS for the cookies. He was allowed to buy unlimited cookies and only eat that for lunch. I asked the cafeteria manager if there was a way to limit to only one cookie, but the system did not allow that. They only thing they could do was put in the system that the child had an allergy and could not buy the cookies at all. That is what I finally ended up doing. That was a few years ago so maybe the system was upgraded (but probably not).

[Anonymous]

Honey, don’t starve the kids!

[Anonymous]

It seems like a common sense setting to allow a kid to buy the meal and not extras. Dumb that this isn’t readily available to parents.

[Anonymous]

I was never able to get this to be enforced. I put in the requests but they could still buy anything they wanted. Their accounts could even go into the red if I stopped funding them and then I’d receive a bill.

It must be school dependent, if the restrictions are enforced.

[Anonymous]

Secondary school, but I sent lunch with my kid and he still kept buying snacks. With no money in his account, so like the PP we would get a bill. School did not make it easy, but we eventually got them to disable the account entirely so nothing could be purchased.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. They won’t parent for you.

Oh look, somebody judging me!! Surprise, surprise!!

Some people are just nasty when they can be anonymous. Imagine what their life must be like for them to want to act that way online. Sad.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was never able to get this to be enforced. I put in the requests but they could still buy anything they wanted. Their accounts could even go into the red if I stopped funding them and then I’d receive a bill.

It must be school dependent, if the restrictions are enforced.

This also happened. We refused to pay the bill because we had already requested the account be disabled and were ignored.

[Anonymous]

I'm having this same issue, but in LCPS. It's really frustrating. I wish there were better food (and yes, I know I can send lunch from home!), but why do the cafeterias offer such low-quality, processed food in the first place?

LinqConnect gives this message:
To place a short - alert message - on your child's meal account (such as "Ice cream only Fridays" or "Complete meals only" etc), please email your request to [e-mail].

Important: We can only add short alerts. We cannot process specific spending limits or financial restrictions.

Your alert will not be active immediately. Please wait for a confirmation email stating it has been successfully applied.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm having this same issue, but in LCPS. It's really frustrating. I wish there were better food (and yes, I know I can send lunch from home!), but why do the cafeterias offer such low-quality, processed food in the first place?

LinqConnect gives this message:
To place a short - alert message - on your child's meal account (such as "Ice cream only Fridays" or "Complete meals only" etc), please email your request to [e-mail].

Important: We can only add short alerts. We cannot process specific spending limits or financial restrictions.

Your alert will not be active immediately. Please wait for a confirmation email stating it has been successfully applied.

They are part of large institutions with a mostly captive population. They aren't accountable for quality so they will save money with pre-packaged and frozen slop. Some parents will send fresh food from home, but they aren't pulling their kids out over it, and some children don't get any better at home, so they don't even know the difference.