School May Install ‘Trash-Cams’ To Spy on Kids Tossing Veggies Posted in
Top Stories |
253 comments 
Oct 3, 2012
By Todd StarnesA Florida school district is considering a plan to install surveillance cameras on cafeteria trash cans to monitor what kids are throwing away – after they discovered that students were tossing out their federally-mandated fruit and vegetables.
The Lake County School Board said more than $75,000 worth of vegetables have been thrown in the garbage. The veggies and fresh fruit are party of the Obama administration’s policy to force schools to provide healthy produce in lunch rooms.
“It’s fairly specific recipe of what they would like us to serve,” Lake County School Board member Tod Howard told Fox News. “Unfortunately, much of it has to do with fresh fruit and vegetables and it seems to be going into the trash. And that’s not okay.”
So Howard suggested the district attach security cameras to the trash cans to monitor exactly what is being thrown away.
“It will also give us documentation so that we can go back to the federal government and say here’s what we are finding,” he said. “We do know there’s an issue.”
School districts across the nation are furious with the Obama administration’s orders. Some students have staged strikes while others have launched petition drives urging the federal government to change their policy.
But Lake County is believed to be the first to actually videotape kids tossing their veggies – and that has some parents upset.
“So we’re going to spend how many more thousands of dollars to put cameras on trash cans to document the thousands of dollars in food the kids are throwing away,” one parent wrote on
ClickOrlando.com “This is a no brainer, kids are not going to eat the stuff served at school. Has anyone really looked at these lunch trays?”
“Why not just remove the kids from their parent’s home at 3 – 5 years-old and put them in mass dormitories where their entire lives can be monitored and properly controlled so that they become properly modeled citizens and serve as they are needed by our enlightened leaders,” another reader wrote.
A number of parents were concerned that their children might be videotaped.
“Because no matter what they say, they are going to try to identify the kids throwing the food away and then social workers and courts will get involved,” wrote one local resident. “If your child doesn’t eat his school lunch, you will face punishment. Think I’m wrong? There are cities and states that punish the adults if the children are truant or get in trouble with the law in any manner. Your kid threw away a carrot? Go to jail. This is what we are coming to.”
Howard called those concerns “conspiracy theories” and said they were not going to force kids to eat their vegetables.
“I don’t want anybody to be on camera at all,” he told Fox News. “This would be aimed directly into the trash can. By no means would any of our students be in the picture.”
He said the cameras were meant to give the school district evidence they need to push back against the federal guidelines.
“If we just can’t get kids to eat broccoli and 90 percent of it is going in the trash – that’s a waste of taxpayer dollars – and the federal government needs to look at their mandate,” he said. “We have no choice in the matter. This is just a tool to help us document he issue.”
No decisions have been made on the cameras – yet.
