A student at a Florida high school had her food thrown out by the cashier in her lunch room because she was short 15-cents, her mother tells CBS’s WKMG.
Kimberly Aiken said that her daughter did not eat at all on her first day of school at University High School in Orange City, Florida on Tuesday because of the incident.
“She puts her food on the tray, gets to the front, gives her number to the cashier, and she says, ‘Well, you owe 15 cents,'” Aiken told CBS. “My daughter said she didn’t have any money, so the cashier took her food.”
Aiken said she signed her daughter up for the school’s free and reduced lunch programs, but it hasn’t taken effect yet and that the 15-cent balance was most likely from the year before.
“You want to make sure that your kids are coming to school, and they’re going to be taken care of,” she told CBS. “We already have all of the scary things happening, but the one thing you don’t want them to worry about is are they going to be able to eat when they go to lunch?”
The school told the network that it “is always willing to work with students and families as needed.”
“The school will be contacting the family directly to help resolve this issue,” Spokesman for Volusia County Public Schools Roger Edgcomb told the local CBS station.
Aiken said her daughter brought in money the next day to settle the balance.
