What were they thinking, and who said there is no such thing as a free lunch?

Officials in the Wyoming Valley West (Luzerne County) School Districts are scrambling to do damage control after their ill-advised attempt to scare parents into paying their children’s delinquent lunch bills. The total? $22,000.

Someone came up with the bright idea to send these parents a letter saying that if they didn’t pay up, their children could be placed in foster care. Stupid, right? Not according to the school board’s solicitor Charles Coslett, who defended the wording

“Your child has been sent to school every day without money and without breakfast and/or lunch,” the letter said. “This is a failure to provide your child with proper nutrition, and you can be sent to Dependency Court for neglecting your child’s right to food.”

The letter was signed by Joseph Muth, the district’s director of federal programs. Muth admitted that he did not clear the letter with the district’s superintendent of schools Irvin DeRemer. Some school board members, including President Joseph Mazur, backed the letter, but others did not.

The public pushback was swift. In addition to the angry parents who received the letters, the executive director of Luzerne County Children and Youth Services Joanne Van Saun said her agency would never go along with such a notion.

“This is a misrepresentation of what our agency does,” Van Saun said. She wants to meet with district officials as soon as possible to make sure they understand the role her agency plays.

Luzerne County Manager David Pedri was equally outraged. In a statement, he said that foster care is used only when absolutely necessary and should never be viewed as a punitive agency or “weaponized to terrorize children and families.”

“Our foster care system is NOT to be utilized to scare parents into paying school lunch bills.’’

A Good Samaritan tried to come to the rescue by offering to pay the entire $22,000 bill to end the controversy, but, he said, board President Mazur would not accept it.

Todd Carmichael, CEO of La Colombe Coffee of Philadelphia, told Mazur by phone this week that his company would cover the delinquent bills, but Mazur said the parents who owe the money can afford to pay. Carmichael said regardless of the parents’ ability to pay, he still wanted to do it, to wipe the slate clean, but, according to Carmichael, Mazur said “no” and hung up.

But the school board on Wednesday said that it would take the donation from Carmichael to pay off the $22,000 in overdue bills, and that it would funnel the money through the district’s nonprofit foundation.

Michael Plaksin, president of the Wyoming Valley West Educational Foundation, said the decision to take the donation was made during discussions he had with members of the school board.

As it turns out, all of the students in the distressed school district will be getting free lunches in the coming school year because of the high percentage of low-income families.

District officials said some parents were miffed that they had to pay for their children’s lunches while others either had reduced prices or got the lunches for free. They believe that some parents intentionally did not pay as a form of protest.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pennsylvania, who lives in neighboring Lackawanna County, issued a statement saying that no children should “have to imagine the horror of being ripped away from their parents” over an unpaid lunch bill.

“These letters were callous and should never have happened,” Casey said.

The district is doing an about-face. Even Muth acknowledges in retrospect that the message was heavy-handed. A letter of apology will be sent, assuring parents that their children are safe. The district still wants the bills paid, but it will use more traditional means to enforce compliance.

The Wyoming Valley West school board “sincerely apologizes for the tone of the letter that was sent regarding lunch debt,” a post on the district’s website Wednesday said. “It wasn’t the intention of the district to harm or inconvenience any of the families in our school district.”

This is the latest in what has been called “lunch-shaming.” It follows the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s directive to school districts two years ago to clamp down on parents who are in arrears in their payments. Some states already prevent districts from targeting these parents, and there is federal legislation that has been introduced to stop it nationwide.

The Wyoming Valley West incident follows on the heels of a decision by a Rhode Island district to provide only sunflower butter and jelly sandwiches rather than a hot lunch to students who had outstanding lunch bills. That equally stupid idea was also rescinded after the public screamed bloody murder.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com