Although "Damani" does sound vaguely Italian, the name actually means one has "good business ability," but with a propensity toward stubbornness. Which seems right in line with Harambee CEO Masai Skief's values. Skief responded to the city council's accusation by saying, "We cannot allow slanderous and inaccurate allegations to impede our success and define who we are," while at the same time admitting that the nightclub existed and that it wasn't anyone's business what the school did after the final bell had rung. Skief was given a severe fine and three years of jail time, but not for serving people watered-down Martinis without a license in a school. Turns out he had embezzled $88,000 from Harambee over the course of several years. Now the school is under new management, and claims to have stopped all of Skief's antics.

But does the school still run an illegal after-hours speakeasy? That depends. What's the password?

Pointing to a possible trend of serving the equivalent of glacier mammoths to schoolchildren, cafeterias in the Boston area were also found to be doling out food that had been kept on ice since back from when the Black Eyed Peas were still a thing. Expressing little in the way of contrition, spokesmen for the schools reminded complainers that the expiration dates set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture were "recommendations, not requirements" -- like roller coaster height restrictions or the age of consent in Texas. The inspector leading the investigation further reassured worried parents that the meat wasn't dangerous to consume, and that it had merely lost most of its nutritional value.

And hey, a little systematic undernourishment has never hurt anyone -- especially not growing children.

skeeze/Pixabay
Besides, the complete lack of nutrients did kill off most of the leprosy in the taco meat.

There are all sorts of ways a struggling school can churn up some quick profit which don't involve cooking meth with ex-students. One year, a school in Grapevine-Colleyville, TX used its office equipment to print copies for the local city government after hours, earning an extra 30 grand. They then made another $87,000 by selling off the unused parking spaces around the football stadium to nearby office workers. Sure, all this might sound a little unorthodox, but the school's entrepreneurial spirit netted them enough to pay the salary of two teachers. Those teachers in turn began selling their services over the summer, tutoring students using more "creative learning situations." And if you want to know the difference between regular learning and creative learning, it's $100 an hour.

But the buildings aren't the only assets administrators have found to exploit. In order to make ends meet, coaches have had to send out their athletes do some fundraising -- and we're not talking about bake sales or barely legal car washes, either. One school in Oregon has started "rent a wrestler" programs, which serve up wiry prepubescents to attend to your gardening needs. Another has posted a "Will work for helmets" ad on his Facebook page. But no Oregonian sports board was harder up for cash than Wilsonville, which had to sell a cow someone had donated. To their credit, they did manage to raise $1,700 for their baseball team, and their basketball team has been unbeatable since they recruited the giant living up that magic beanstalk.

ulleo/Pixabay
That cow would never have survived the next round of cafeteria budget cuts.

In many parts of the country, things have gotten so bad that schools are being forced to choose between school buses and school teachers, with districts like Murrieta Valley, California having to pay "$3.5 million a year to run the transportation program" while the government only chips in $86,000. That's why, instead of scrapping the program, some schools have decided to go the Uber route. In Golden, Colorado, public schools having begun requiring their students to pay a fee to sit and lick the windows of their school buses -- charging a modest $150 a year to break even.

ebpilgrim/Pixabay
"10 bucks for coach, 20 to sit in the back with the cool kids, and it's customary to tip your driver a pudding cup."

But if you should happen to reside in one San Diego district, you'd better be prepared to shell out upwards of $575. For families with several children, the school has kindly capped its yearly bus fee at a whopping $1,437. The fact that this happens to be the exact price of a four-night stay in a Caribbean casino is surely a coincidence.

And with a budget deficit in the area of $80 million, it makes sense that Philadelphia schools proposed a price tag of $2.25 per ride, each way. Over the course of an entire year, that adds up to over $800. At least in the old days, spending that kind of cash on a ride to school meant you'd be getting drunk on stolen liquor with your prom date in the back of a limo.

When the Marana Unified School District in Arizona got hit with an extortion racket, it wasn't operated by a bunch of goons in pinstriped suits, but the most ruthless, aggressive gang known to man: high school gym teachers. Specifically, the ones in charge of girl's volleyball. When the coaching team was told they needed to raise $12,500, they sent notes to the players' parents demanding $250 "in tax credits." The note also made clear that if the money wasn't in their hands by the end of the week, they were going to start physically punishing their children, forcing them to do ten "grinders" plus one for every day their parents weren't coughing up the money -- or until they were dead, we guess.

keijj44/Pixabay
"You lost your babysitting job? Fuck you, pay me. Your parents are getting divorced? Fuck you, pay me. Teenage pregnancy? Fuck you, pay me."

Then we have the school district in Kokomo, Indiana, which didn't take kindly to students who owed more than $25 in lunch fees. To deal with these degenerates, kids with outstanding payments could have their lunch trays confiscated and their food severely rationed. This "alternate lunch" looked something like this:

Sierra Feitl
You also get a single packet of salt and all the water you can scoop from the fountain.

When a similar situation arose in a New Jersey school, which parents allegedly left in the red for $100,000 in unpaid lunch money, at least their educators didn't respond by slowly starving their wards. Instead, the Englewood school handled parents with outstanding lunch debts by contacting Child Protective Services, requesting that they be investigated for neglect. Gotta make that paper somehow.

E. Reid Ross also pokes various creatures with a stick over at The Featured Creature. Feel free to follow him on Twitter here.

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