BenK…Let me put responses to your questions/statements/plight together in a cohesive answer<
There is no such thing as a FREE lunch. Schools not charging students for lunch receive some USDA surplus food at no charge to use in making the meals, BUT the school (if private) or school system and taxpayers pay the rest of cost of cooking and serving those lunches. Ingredients, labor, equipment, utilities.
Yeshivos and Day Schools cannot allow students to bring lunch from home (imagine the politics and insults in allowing food from one house and not another). It may be cheaper to use an outside vendor (caterer) than to make lunch in the school (economy of scale). Would it make you feel better if the annual school fee was $500 higher instead of seeing a bill for lunches $500?
Don’t equate ‘caterer’ school lunches with the $150 per plate meal at a chasunah.
Field trips and high costs. NO, the schools don’t ask parents. Get involved in the parents association and offer to help plan these things. It may be that the current group of parents helping to plan are those who can easily afford ‘high’ priced trips and a different point of view is needed. The school authorities will not buck their biggest donors, the other parents must join in the planning and be represented.
Our grandson’s school sponsored a trip to Great Adventure last Friday. They were charging $100. Because CT state law does not allow school trips in ‘yellow’ school buses to out of state locations, they had the high cost of chartered coaches. My daughter and son-in-law, said no, they got other parents together to also say no. The trip was cancelled for lack of response. Instead, there is an instate trip to a go-kart track and sports venue this Sunday. Cost $20. Mrs. CTL and I are providing coolers full of cold drinks and bagged snacks for less than the cost for 2 students to have gone to Great Adventure.