Teacher Stamps Child In Red Ever Day, Dad Decided To Take Action

“She was far more upset than she was letting on. She didn’t want her bundle of joy to see how angry she truly was. She tried to keep her cool and get the two of them home. Once there, she took a deep breath and looked at her son’s arm. She could see the marks easily once he rolled up his sleeve. They were going to pay for this.

Tara Chavez had researched all the schools in the area of Phoenix before she had decided on Desert Cove Elementary. Her son Caden was a sensitive soul, and she wanted to make sure that he would be treated accordingly with good-sized classes and a focus on children’s well-being. Desert Cove Elementary seemed like they’d treat him well. Tara felt satisfied that Desert Cove Elementary would be a good fit for her son, so she filled out the paperwork and promptly enrolled him. Little did she know, the school was about to do something that would make her sorely regret her decision and cause controversy online. It wouldn’t be long before other parents were speaking out too.

After a full term at the school, everything seemed to be going swimmingly until it suddenly didn’t. Little Caden excelled in his studies, made a lot of new friends, and loved all his teachers. But as Tara and her husband were about to find out, the teachers weren’t the ones they needed to keep an eye on.

As usual, Tara picked Kaden up from school, but when she saw his face, she knew that something was deeply wrong. Her thoughts immediately flew to bullying, and her blood began to boil. Regaining her composure, she cheerily asked Caden how his day had been. She had to get to the bottom of this now. Caden replied with a tense “fine” and resumed gazing out the window.

Tara gently asked if something had happened at school, but he didn’t answer. Understanding that he didn’t want to talk about it, she decided to give him space and continue the conversation later with her husband. Then she saw a jarring mark on his arm. Tara craned her neck over to try to see what was on her son’s arm. At first, she thought it looked like dirt, but the closer she looked, the more she began to think otherwise. Whatever had made her son unhappy today was due to that mark, she just knew it, and she was about to be proven right.

Tara’s mind became full of suspicions, but instead of demanding that Caden show her his arm, she decided to focus on the road and deal with the issue when they got home. She gripped the wheel until her knuckles turned white, trying not to let Caden see just how upset she was. Whoever did this was going to pay.

When they arrived home, Caden headed straight towards his room, but Tara stopped him. She called her husband, pulled out a chair, and invited Caden to take a seat. Her husband playfully caught Caden and perched him on the seat. Tara asked him to show them his arm. He looked down as he lifted up his sleeve, and there it was, what the school did to him, plain as day.

“I asked if he was given a choice, and he said no,” the angry mom explained in an interview. The mark was ink, but he hadn’t written on his own arm. His father looked closer until he could make out the words that were stamped. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Immediately, her husband took a picture of Caden’s arm. He was screaming and crying the entire time, Tara said. He was humiliated, didn’t even want me to take a picture of it.

There, in thick blue capital letters, were the words “lunch money” stamped on her son’s arm. But what was the meaning of this, and who had done it? Caden explained that it was the lunch lady. Apparently, she had felt the need to publicly shame him in front of the entire school. The more his parents heard, the angrier they became. The fact that her son felt so embarrassed by the stamp was the most concerning part. Why wouldn’t the school send her a reminder via email if her son’s account was running low?

Angered, they posted this incident online. Was this right? It wasn’t long before Tara’s post about the stamp exploded online. It quickly racked up hundreds of comments and shares, and most parents were supportive, saying that Tara’s anger was completely justified.

“Like y’all couldn’t send a note?” her friend asked. “Y’all couldn’t think for two seconds about the numerous references of branding someone as a stigma? What kind of twisted person holds a child’s arm and applies a big block-lettered stamp in black ink to their little arm?” another user wrote. Most people who saw the post said that the stamp was unacceptable.

But what would the school have to say for themselves? Shortly after the post went viral, Tara heard from them. Desert Cove principal Stacy Orest stated that cafeteria staff had never intended to embarrass students with reminder stamps and that they are always supposed to ask them if they want a stamp or a reminder slip. But that answer wasn’t good enough for Tara or the other parents who were on her side. They wanted the reminder stamps gone.

The following Monday, after the extensive and prominent backlash manifested all across social media, the school was forced to make an official statement on the matter. Paradise Valley Unified School District spokesperson Becky Kellboss said, “It was never the intention of Desert Cove Elementary School administration and staff to embarrass any student by using the stamp.” She continued, “Students were given the choice between a letter or reminder stamp. Going forward, Desert Cove Elementary School will send a letter home notifying parents of low lunch balances.” She also told the Phoenix New Times that Desert Cove will discontinue reminder stamps about low lunch money accounts.

But this isn’t the first time this has happened. John Bivens’s son, a third-grader who attends Gardendale Elementary School, came home with a similar stamp on his arm. At first, John didn’t think much of it. “I thought it was a good job stamp,” he said. Then he saw that it was a stamp that said “I need lunch money.” John was surprised as the school usually sent them a notification when his son’s account was running low.

John and his wife sent their son to school with packed lunches but allowed him to occasionally buy treats from the school’s cafeteria. But what angered John the most was that his son had had a positive balance on his cafeteria account at the end of the term. At the time of the offending stamp, John’s son still had a balance of $1.38 cents.

‘They herd these kids like cattle,’ the angry dad said. He also said that his son was branded. ‘When you start stamping a message on a child’s body instead of calling, it’s not okay,’ he said in an interview. ‘It’s a form of bullying and shaming the kids,’ he added.

However, sometimes things can be even worse. Unfortunately, there are many schools all across the country where so-called “lunch shaming” is still very much alive. Many parents and even school cafeteria workers oppose it as it dehumanizes children and exposes them to shame and scorn. But it’s still the norm for some schools. And sometimes, things can be even worse than a humiliating and stigmatizing stamp.

Lunch shaming can be defined as singling out a kid whose parents have school lunch debt. However, the way in which the kid is singled out can vary, and each school often feels free to go as far as the state law allows. But sometimes, this has resulted in callous, inhuman punishments for children whose parents can’t afford school lunch. Unfortunately, stamping is a relatively common shaming practice if a kid’s parents owe money, in the concept of lunch debt. Another usual practice is swapping the kid’s hot meal for a colder, lower quality one. However, sometimes, it gets worse.

As inhuman as it sounds, some schools make the kids work the debt off or verbally shame them in front of peers. Many schools have gotten in trouble for these sorts of tactics and, just like in the stories above, faced backlash from parents and the media. However, others defend it as a way to reduce school debt in a public schooling system with plenty on their plates in the form of budgeting problems. But does this really justify certain things?

Many people, both parents and former students, can tell real horror stories about how they or their kids were treated by the school staff when they couldn’t afford their lunch. These practices can sometimes be cruel and impact kids’ emotional growth significantly. They make even less sense when one considers that, according to Feeding America, 16 million American children struggle with hunger each year.

Not many school cafeteria workers will turn away a kid who can’t pay for their meals, but some of them do. And sometimes, the laws force them to do even worse. In Pennsylvania’s 84th District, they adopted a policy requiring school cafeteria workers to throw hot lunches away rather than serve them to children who owed lunch money.

‘God is love, and we should love one another and be kind,’ Col Tiska said. ‘There’s enough wealth in this world that no child should go hungry, especially in school. To me, this is just wrong.’

In order to protect the privacy of those depicted, some names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed and are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual events, places, or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.”