Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Sunday, May 27, 2007
State orders school to stop withholding food as punishment
MILWAUKEE — The state has ordered a military-style private school to stop punishing students by serving them smaller lunches and is withholding money for food programs until the problems are corrected, according to a letter by the Department of Public Instruction.
The state has halted its share of the money for lunch and breakfast for low-income students until the La Brew Troopers Military University School stops withholding food as punishment, Helen Pesche, child nutrition program consultant for the state, wrote in a letter to the school dated May 21.
The letter said that inspections at the school found students were sometimes punished by being served lunch without either meat or a substitute and a vegetable and fruit.
A DPI report said one day when inspectors visited the school, 24 students were served lunches that did not include a sloppy joe on a bun and canned fruit, like their peers ate. Instead, the report said the children were given a slice of white bread, half a cup of mashed potatoes and a half pint of milk.
The report said students told a DPI employee that when someone is really bad, they only get bread and water.
Withholding food is unacceptable for schools participating in the National School Lunch Program, a federally assisted program that subsidizes school food, the report said.
“This method of discipline must stop immediately,” the report said.
State records show La Brew has 162 students from kindergarten through the sixth grade as of January. The school has participated in the private school voucher program since the 2003-04 school year, and got a little more than $1 million this year in public money.
The report also said the school needs has more than a dozen ways it needs to correct how it handles the subsidized lunch and breakfast programs, to which the state also contributes.
For instance, the report said records were not kept properly, and the school claimed payment for lunches for 18 children who did not file applications to participate in the program.
The school also claimed payment for lunch on two days in February when it was closed due to bad weather, the report said.
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