>>>There's no question that stigmatizing the "poor kids" is damaging. I forget who it was, but some moron representative in Georgia wanted poor kids to clean school bathrooms, sweep school floors in order to get their free lunch. Unbelievable.
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>>On forcing kids to work for lunch - full ACK downto the descriptive adjective.
>>Unless they are working, that is a job for the parents, instead of watching TV.
>>IMO having parents at least do some work for common funds (if they are on the dole in general) would trump stigmatizing kids, but that might cut into enrollment, which probably has to be signed by parent... I prefer the clean cut programming logic ;-)
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>With regards to students performing cleaning duties... In Japan (and I believe in many other countries), students do participate in the regular cleaning of school....

yupp, but while that might be linked to seniority having an easier time (think dojo), linking it to not-well-earning parents seems lunatic - and having the rich kids work as well so that the poor ones do not get stigmatized is even more lunatic to me. Your example of having to "work" instead of paying tops all - even if it is only work on the books and ot in real life. Some might consider that to be fraudulent - as funds have to be shifted somewhere a grain of truth even if only done for other reasons.