Sep 22, 2016 3 min read

The superintendent for Canon-McMillan School District is pushing back against the version of events offered by a food worker who resigned over the district’s lunch policy.

In a story published last week in the Observer-Reporter that gained national attention, Stacy Myers Koltiska posted to Facebook she quit her job as a lunch lady at Wylandville Elementary because she had to take away a first-grade boy’s hot chicken nugget lunch and give him a cold cheese sandwich because his lunch account was $25 or more in debt to the school.

“I will never forget his name or the look on his face and then his eyes welled up with tears,” Koltiska said. “He comes up in the line, this boy with his chicken nuggets, and my supervisor’s eyes get wide, and she shakes her head and mouths ‘sandwich.’ I had to take away his hot meal and give him a cheese sandwich and throw the other food away.”

Outrage erupted over the allegations she was forced to switch out the meals and throw the hot food away. But Superintendent Michael Daniels told KDKA-TV Koltiska was never instructed to throw the food away and the boy’s account was actually found not delinquent, so he was served chicken nuggets.

“There were no tears. There was no embarrassment. The opposite of what the former lunch lady claims,” Daniels said.

Koltiska told the Observer-Reporter in the original interview the mother of the boy called to thank her for standing up for her son. Requests to Koltiska to confirm the identity of the boy or his mother were not returned.

Canon-McMillan School District posted on its homepage as of Thursday evening a policy notice.

“The Canon-McMillan School District does not take lunches away from students…The (lunch) policy does not change the availability of food options for students that existed prior to cafeteria credit programs, it only changes the ability to continuously overdraw a school lunch credit account.  This policy does not apply to students who are eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch, and prior to reaching a $25 overdraw, families with negative balances will receive information about the Free and Reduced meals that may be available to them.  Families with the financial means to pay for school lunches, but who allow their child’s lunch account to be overdrawn are given more than two weeks to resolve the account before it affects the lunch items available to their child…The District apologizes to its families for the misapplication of the policy by a former cafeteria worker. The Board is currently reviewing this Policy to ensure no employee misinterprets or misapplies the policy in the future.”

District business manager Joni Mansmann said the school board approved last week to pay $20,000 in debts owed to the lunch program. Mansmann said before the policy, which was recommended by the Pennsylvania School Board Association, the district had annual lunch debts up to $100,000.