READINGTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Sometimes a penny for your thoughts isn't a good thing. Readington Township school officials gave 29 students detention after they used pennies to pay for their $2 lunches.
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Superintendent Jorden Schiff says it started out as a prank. But as the eighth-graders began to get in trouble for taking up so much time, it turned into a protest about Thursday's shortened lunch period.
Schiff said the students were punished for holding up their peers and disrespecting lunch aides.
Schiff said some parents think a two-day detention went too far and others think it wasn't enough.
The school said it wants students to know they can express themselves without disrupting other people.
Aren't pennies money?
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15 comments:
Of course pennies count, but I agree with the school. I rememeber how short lunches were and for 29 kids to be joking like this is disrespectful. The point is that the knew what they were doing was annoying, and probably held quite a few students from buying lunch. They were not punished for making "penny payments" they were punished for being annoying and selfish.
i think they should get rid of the penny already if even paying for school lunches with pennies can get students detention.
at my school, we pretty much all had free lunch so having kids pay and holding up the lines was never an issue. but i can see how counting 200 pennies can be quite time consuming.
Wow, to be honest, that is so much BS that I think the people who did the punishing should be the ones punished. I think pennies are legitimate form of payment. Being a cashier myself, I realize its quite tedious to count 200 pennies, however, it is still no reason to punish someone. According to our class lecture, would this be a form of earmarking because the pennies were put out of circulation and used for lunch payment? Id like to go personally meet these guys who decided it was a punishable offense to hold up a line because Im sure they have also done similar things before in life.
I really enjoyed this piece. I have often wondered-- and almost attempted to pay the lunch people with pennies. But I always feared it would take up too much time. So I never did it. But I told myself I would do that my last day as a high school senior. But then -- didn't because on my last day of school I was OUT OF THERE. HAahah.
But it reminded me again of an earlier article when we might stop making pennies.
Would they have been upset if it were nickels or dimes?
Also-- were they just annoyed at the time it took to count the pennies? Because-- if someone paid with lots of rolled up pennies-- would have it been all right?
So really the issue for this article is time [shorted lunch break, disrupting/taking away lunch time from others]. So I do declare--- time is money.
This reminds me of a news clip I saw about a man who paid for a brand new truck in quarters. It wasn't the first time he had done it either.
It was a very heavy load of money for him to carry in to the dealership.
This is hilarious!...Perfect piece for an anthro class about money. The fact that coins were used for a prank was very creative and to highlight the inability of schools to handle a simple problem. Detention is always their solution but is detention a good source of punishment? Not really, everybody remembers that detention such a good way to get into more trouble. The cafeteria supervisor should have stop them as soon as they realize it was a prank but they let it continue so it was partially their fault. Hilarious non the less!...LOL!
I definitely see the point of the school. Working on the cash register end of a store for about a year made me realize that coins need to be fortified with bills for a payment. I can't tell you how many times I had to get $4 in nickels and pennies off of some person who was "just trying to get rid of my change--you don't mind, do you?" I agree that the kids were being annoying, but I don't think that a two day detention is a rightful punishment for paying for food.
I've worked in retail before and I would have to say that working at the register and counting 200 pennies would be such a pain. And Tanya brings up a good point though, would they have been punished if they had used nickels or dimes? Probably not. Pennies just seem to be a sort of throw away money for many people, they don't care if they drop it or lose it. However, even though pennies are completely legitimate, I think that being punished with detention isn't all that unreasonable. I mean, the kids did it for fun, it was a prank, and if I remember correctly lunch was no more that 30 minutes tops, I know I would be extremely frustrated if I were behind those kids in line.
if this wasnt a prank than i would see no problem with paying with pennies. pennies use to have significant because back in the day you can buy a bottle of pop,get a magazine, or comics for a couple of pennies. there are probably people who do use coins to pay for lunch, like poor college students who have coins in their coin jars and but want a $11.57 pizza
really how functioning is the penny these days?
This is definitely not your typical eighth grade prank. What I'm wondering is how did these 29 students organize this and get 200 pennies each? And where did they keep it all? There's more to this penny prank and I'm interested in hearing the student's side of this.
I find this article hilarious! I mean think about it, pennies are money too, right? I think because they are worth so little they often get overlooked. I mean seriously, everytime I recieve pennies in a transaction I can almost certainly guarentee you that I will tell the cashier to keep them or I'll lose them or just throw them in a big jar. Why is that? I guess only in America would you find people like myself (I am ashamed to say) throwing money away! In terms of the article, I really don't see how these kids can "legally" be punished. Im pretty sure they are just doing it to be funny but unless there is a sign up or a rule saying you won't accept pennies not really sure you can punish them. I think a more proper action would have been to make a rule so that kids couldn't do it anymore rather than punish kids who did do it. Just another loophole in society I guess.
It might have been a prank, but it's surprising that the school effectively decided that they could set a preferred method of payment. I mean if they wanted to be so picky, why didn't they just say no change in general?..Since cash is much easier to handle. I guess I'd know this firsthand since I used to work at the "bank" at Knott's Berry Farm, (which was basically where all the money tendered in the park was brought in to be counted). Change was definitely more troublesome to count, but we still had to do it. So unless they let the kids know they'd be punished beforehand, detention for it is heavyhanded.
this is just too funny! omg, i can't believe this. What I find interesting is that all the students were able to come together and only give away pennies. I side with them on the fact that they were trying to make a point but i definitely see where the school is coming from. I would hate to be the person at the cash register adding up each students' pennies, I am sure I would get really frustrated as well!
The school has no right to give students detention for paying with pennies unless there was a previous rule or sign that stated pennies were not accepted.
I don't think this is that big of a deal, they are just using pennies, what's wrong with that, it is money after all. I suppose that if I was one of the people behind these pranksters I'd probably get mad, but that is why you bring your own lunch!
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