What kind of adults steal food from children and then mock them for being hungry? These sociopaths should be fired and barred from even working around children.
Maybe, but the government tried to cut the funding, and after public pushback agreed to keep it but reduced the funding down to $3 per kid for the schools that get it. They admitted that it will be hard to find a lunch at that price level but reduced it anyway. I highly doubt the government is open to giving lunch to the staff as well as the kids.
This is really shit. So many things the school has done wrong here. This is the same reason many businesses have a policy that the staff can't take damaged goods, as there is often someone who ruins it by taking advantage of it.
In this school lunch scenario I would expect appropriate action would be to say staff are not allowed any. If there are any lunches left over after the kids have had theirs, then it should be given to a third party charity (e.g. a food bank) to dish out. And obviously if a kid wants to contact their parents, there are very few scenarios where this should be denied (I can't think of any).
My assumption is if they have 500 kids they make 500 lunches, but some kids will be sick so teachers are allowed to take a lunch if there are some left over. But then some teachers were missing out so probably some rivalry to get in first and eventually this evolved to getting in before all the kids have eaten.
Also maybe they assume say 5% of kids will be sick each day, which would mean the number of lunches left over may vary a lot depending on actual attendence.