Yup... saw this firsthand...
When I was driving the schoolbus, our boss "reminded" us that "school policy forbids eating and drinking on school buses". That's all well and good, except for a few problems:
1) it's totally unenforceable. My job was to drive a bus; to do that I have to look out the FRONT windshield. I have a mirror to watch the students from time to time as I drive, but that's more for spotting major disruptions or discipline issues than minor things. Besides, the first time you bust a kid for eating on the bus, the rest learn to just "slink down in the seat" and eat surreptitiously, so they cannot be seen and therefore cannot get written up for violating the policy.
2) Once the kids learn that "slinking down in the seat" will prevent 90% or better of their chances of being caught, they then remain that way and as they finish eating their snacks, kids do what kids do, and instead of sticking the wrappers or empty packages back into their lunch kits or backpacks, they stuff those empty wrappers and crap down into the crack between the seat back and seat cushion... which of course is already full of wrappers expended by other kids on previous days/weeks, which then dislodges about 3 wrappers out the bottom of the crack which then drop onto the floor and blow around the bus, making the bus about as sanitary as a pig sty...
3) then the excess litter builds up and creates a huge trash problem that has to be swept up and cleaned out when the driver (me) sweeps the bus. I was actually fairly diligent in this regard and swept my bus on Fridays, so it would be (mostly) clean if it were sent out over the weekend on various sports or activities or contests. Some drivers NEVER cleaned their buses despite that being part of their job...
SO, noticing that despite diligent enforcement efforts on my part and trying to keep the bus clean, I was fighting a losing battle, I made a deal with the kids-- I'd let them eat on the bus without anything being said, IF THEY would agree to put ALL the trash either back into their backpacks or lunch kits, or take it to the bus's trash cans by the front and back doors. I wouldn't even say anything about them getting up while the bus was in motion, so long as they went straight to the trash can, deposited the garbage in it, and returned straight to their seats (perhaps talking to their friend a moment or passing a note along the way, which is what they were really after anyway). The kids agreed and I cut the trash problem on my bus by about 3/4. We fixed the rest of it by "passing the trash can" and requiring the students to pick up the trash under their seats (regardless of who threw it there) and put it in the can as it passed, before we would start our route home on Friday evenings... the kids particularly want to get home ASAP on Friday evenings and will do ANYTHING to get moving as rapidly as possible, and having to delay leaving the school until the bus "passed my inspection" for wayward trash was something they wanted to avoid-- so much so that they started fussing at other kids throwing stuff on the floor rather than taking it to the trash cans on their own, so I wouldn't pull a "trash inspection" on Friday afternoons.
My boss fussed at me about kids eating on the bus, but I told him my reasons and that it worked for me... and if he wanted to write up kids for eating, he could come do it himself.
Once the kids were free to eat on the bus, I realized why there was SO much garbage (to the point you couldn't see the floor on some buses for all the trash and litter floating around down there-- the kids are STARVING by the time they get out of school! School lunches had long been somewhat of a joke (even back in the late 80's when I was in high school... breakfasts were particularly awful, but the lunches were usually pretty bad; we had an elderly Bohemian woman who was the school's head cook-- she would save up some money on the 'cheap' meals like the crappy square pieces of pizza and canned corn or fish bricks and mac-n-cheese we'd get on Friday's (and some other days of the week had lousy items as well... the soyburgers we had almost every Thursday were mediocre... not good but not awful either). With the money she saved, she would cook a REALLY good meal about once every other week... beef tips and rice, or turkey and dressing, stuff like that, which was actually GOOD. The cafeteria was particularly busy on those days...
When Moo-shell Obummer got in there and the big fat heifer decided that kids needed to be fed tiny portions of prepackaged CRAP, the kids rebelled... I know I ate at my daughter's elementary school a couple times... it's ridiculous! Our beknighted idiot former Ag Commissioner, Susan Combs, who's department oversees the school lunch programs, decided to institute new regulations regarding menus, calories, and all that other crap more in line with Mooshell Obummer's nonsense, they fired all the old kitchen staff... a fellow bus driver's wife had ascended to head the cafeteria when the elderly lady retired, and they canned her-- "they cannot understand the new rules and regulations" and then hired it out under contract to Chartwells. Virtually all the schools now hire out their cafeteria staff to these "food service" companies like Chartwells. I know when I ate at my daughter's school, she begged me to eat lunch but I demurred and just drank an overpriced half-pint of shitty orange juice (mostly water and green sour/frosted oranges squeezed for juice that tasted about like floor polish) and visited with the kids, and then I went to Cafe East (chinese buffet) afterwards... the kids each got a dinky pull-top plastic cup of corn in water, a piece of rather shitty looking fruit, and a choice of either a dried out pink-slime "chicken fingers" or a cold tortilla folded over onto itself with a pinch of cheese in it as a "quesadilla", and a half-pint of sugary 1% watered down chocolate, strawberry, or white milk, though 99% of them chose chocolate or strawberry. I watched the kids eat, and most chose the "quesadilla" because it was at least PARTIALLY edible-- NOTHING is cooked "on site" anymore, it's simply REHEATED at the school after being cooked in a huge central kitchen somewhere that Chartwell's runs and then delivers the food to the schools. Even the little packages of corn are just kept on trays in a warmer, that they're put into straight off the truck-- the kids have to pull their own tabs off the top to open them like a pudding cup. The chicken fingers were hard as a rock, the one girl I saw at Keira's table had begged ketchup cups from some of her friends and had drowned the thing in ketchup trying to soften it enough to be edible. The kids usually ate the pre-packed veggie, nibbled at the tortilla or pulled the cheese out of it, and threw the obviously not-store-sellable undersize, blemished fruit in the trash with about 2/3 of the rest of the "lunch". They'd guzzle the milk and for some, eat the ketchup... most of the "food" went into the trash. One of our M&O guys had to stay at the school on a job and couldn't go into town to eat lunch and then had to sub-drive a bus for someone who called in, and he commented how lousy the school lunch was even for teachers/adult employees-- "I got SIX lousy cold french fries-- SIX-- they count the damn things out!"
SO, on my bus every day, the kids were having a luau... soon as the got on the bus and everybody got pretty much situated, they'd open up their lunch kits and backpacks and out would come the snacks-- bags of chips, various other snacks like candy bars, granola bars, fruit roll ups, etc that kids usually eat for snacks. They'd pass them around and trade back and forth between and amongst themselves... and so long as the garbage ended up in the can, I could care less...
Mooshell Obummer was a moronic heifer anyway. Kids have bottomless appetites-- even back when we had pretty decent school lunches by today's standards, we would be "starving" by the time we got home. Mom and Dad both worked, so we let ourselves into the house and had our own little luau... which usually involved grabbing a couple slices of cheese from the fridge and a coke and busting open a big back of Doritos and munching out while we watched afternoon cartoons... She was too stupid to figure out that by starving the kids at school, they just PIG OUT on "munchies" and other junk food when they get home, most of them ahead of their parents. Instead of the school taking the opportunity to feed the kids GOOD BALANCED meals of a meat protein, a couple healthy cooked vegetables, and a slice of bread or something and GOOD milk or juice, and filling them up with GOOD HEALTHY food, they elect to starve them with starvation rations of crap that would cause a prison riot if it were served in the joint... and of course the kids aren't idiots-- the nibble enough to stave off their hunger for a few hours and MOST of it ended up in the trash... then they PIG OUT on junk food when they get home. Most of them live in single parent families and all they get is prefabbed junk food and take out anyway... Hell my sister is a teacher and she never feeds her kids right-- if she or my BIL DO cook it's usually just pasta or something quick and easy like that-- my nephews practically live on pizza and junk food and one NEVER eats veggies-- both are overweight and the older boy (who's a freshman in high school) has "the back of a 40 year old" according to his doctor...
If the school served a decent, healthy lunch of lean meat, prepared fruits and vegetables, and whole grain bread or pasta along with a healthy dairy serving, the kids WOULD AT LEAST get ONE healthy fulfilling meal a day...
Oh well... That's why my wife and daughter take their lunches... the boys do too-- mostly those practically worthless "lunchables" things since Mom's nowdays are too busy to make balogne sandwiches anymore and toss a little bag of doritos in with it and a fruit roll up or fruit cup...
Later! OL J R
My MUNIFICENCE is BOUNDLESS, Mr. Bond...