Threatening foster care is a bit much... so pathetic, but really parents need to feed their kids. The poor kids already get their lunch paid for by the state, it's kids that parents aren't responsible enough to make sure their kids have enough money on their card to pay for lunch or kids who spend their money on extras through out the week & run out by the end of the week. No child should be left hungry if they don't have money or no food... perhaps the PTA could fund raise & use the money towards school lunches for their school. Where is all that lottery money that was supposed to supplement schools.
In California teachers get reimbursed if they have to purchase school supplies, also they can write it off on their income tax.
The lottery money for schools goes to scholarships for college education. Not for grade school kid lunch programs.
It is not the schools fault if they kid spends all their money for the week (in their account) on ice cream and extras by Wednesday. Learn responsibility. It needs to be like when I was in school. You purchase a meal ticket and each day you have to present the meal ticket and a punch is taken off. You get one meal and nothing extra. If you lose your meal ticket you have to purchase another one. RESPONSIBILITY!
As far as getting paid back for supplies teachers purchase that is not true. Yes, they get x amount (not a very high amount) to purchase supplies for their classroom. As far as "writing it off your taxes" it doesn't make a difference. Very few people have enough stuff to "write off" to go above the standard deduction. Teachers should not have to supply a lot of things they do anyway. We had a list of supplies we needed. Once we were doing a project and needed a composition notebook. That was on the list of supplies. So every kid had to purchase their own composition notebook for the project. And every kid did. There may have been one or two supposedly too poor to get one and I guess the teacher got it for them and nobody knew the difference. I have a specific kid in mind. Yeah they got every freebie coming and going. But they also drove new cars. So there ya go.
And lastly, the PTA (do you even know what that is) is not responsible for raising money to pay for items for kids whose parents are too lazy to pay their own way. People are tired of the ones who are always asking for a hand out. It's like the county I live in. There is a man who is all gung ho about the Habitat for Humanity and has all these big ideas and thinks the county citizens are just gonna jump behind him and make all these donations. NO, people are tired of funding the lazy who refuse to work. Or instead of paying their bills and necessitates waste the money on lottery tickets, beer, cigarettes, or $60 eating out when they get paid and then want somebody else to pay the electric bill and rent.