One Missouri dad was shocked to receive a letter from his daughter’s substitute teacher telling him he had packed her a lunch that was too unhealthy.
The girl’s father Justin Puckett, who is a family doctor, posted the letter, written on orange paper to his Facebook, outraged at the ‘Big Brother’ approach from the Kirksville Primary School teacher.
Annoyed at the implication he and his wife Kylene were not up to the task of caring for their own daughter, Dr. Puckett refused to sign the letter acknowledging he accepted the lunch was not up to scratch.
Dr. and Mrs Puckett were shocked to receive the letter on Tuesday evening when their daughter, Alia, returned home from school.
It read: ”Dr. and Mrs. Puckett, The cafeteria reported to me that Alia’s lunch today included four chocolate bars, a bag of marshmallows, Ritz crackers and a pickle. Please see that she packs a proper lunch tomorrow.’
The letter then ends with a curt demand – ‘Parent signature requested’. The Pucketts wrote back, ‘Request declined’.
What annoyed Dr. Puckett most about the letter was the judgmental tone it struck, leaving him in no doubt his parenting skills were under question.
‘Unfortunately, the letter didn’t have what she had, correctly. She had four pieces of ham, a whole protein meat, she also had some pickles, which we admittedly cheat on pickles every once and awhile as a vegetable, because some fights just aren’t worth having,’ said Dr. Puckett.
‘She also had four marshmallows in a Ziploc bag and then she had three very small pieces of chocolate, of which she ate one for lunch and then she also gave her brother and another friend one at an after school program,’ Puckett said to ABC 3.
While Dr. Puckett was contacted by the school principal, Tricia Reger on Wednesday and apologized to, he still feels mildly slighted.
‘The issue isn’t what happened at the Primary School and with my daughter because she is very independent and going to be completely unaffected by this. But what does bother me is that it just seems that we are constantly being inundated with the inability to be parents of our children,’ Puckett added according to ABC 3.
The implication was that these are bad parents, which isn’t even remotely the case. The children belong to the parents, not to the school or the government. It sure as hell doesn’t take a village here. The Superintendent’s excuse was: “We have as educators been directed to provide healthy and nutritious foods for so long that we had an individual take it upon themselves to send a note home to parents. This will not happen again and I am sorry for any inconvenience.” That’s your excuse? The school can provide paid lunches as they see fit, but unless they see a child with no food or an obvious lack of food in a packed lunch, it is none of the school’s or the teacher’s business – period. I wouldn’t count on it not happening again – not with Mooch in charge of the government’s mandate on lunches for school children. Now that truly is abusive.