THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Who knew that working in a school cafeteria could be so lucrative. Or that a school administration could be so dumb.

In the well-to-do town of New Canaan, Conn., families pay top dollar to live on picturesque New England streets, frequent the area’s upscale boutiques and send their children to some of the best schools in the state.

But in recent years, a scandal had quietly been brewing at a couple of those schools: Someone had been taking the children’s lunch money — after it had been paid.

For years, cash was disappearing from cafeteria registers at the high school and middle school, apparently unbeknown to school officials. Nearly $500,000 was pilfered from 2012 through 2017, the authorities said.

On Monday, the New Canaan Police Department announced that it had arrested two women: sisters who worked in the cafeteria system.

Joanne Pascarelli, 61, and Marie Wilson, 67, turned themselves in over the weekend and were released on $50,000 bond. They are accused of underreporting how much cash had been collected and taking the remainder. Each was charged with larceny.

“Since it occurred over a long period of time in relatively small amounts, the district was unaware of these discrepancies until it instituted new financial controls specifically related to the collection and depositing of cash in the cafeterias,” Michael Horyczun, spokesman for New Canaan Public Schools, said in an email Monday night.

The New Canaan Board of Education, which governs public education in the town, filed a complaint with the police in December 2017. The women resigned under threat of termination the same month, according to their arrest warrants.

Ms. Wilson worked as the assistant food director at New Canaan High School, which reported thefts at the cafeteria totaling about $350,000 from 2012 to 2017, the police said. Under her supervision, cashiers did not count the money at the end of the day, but rather Ms. Wilson did that task herself, the police said.

Her sister, Ms. Pascarelli, was in charge of the food program at Saxe Middle School, which lost about $127,000 in the same five-year period, the police said. Co-workers told the police that Ms. Pascarelli came to the cash registers and removed large bills in between lunch periods.

Ms. Pascarelli told the police that her former co-workers were lying. “I would never take money,” she said. “I know better than that.”

But after Ms. Pascarelli left her job at the cafeteria, the police said, the average daily cash intake in the middle-school cafeteria — which once averaged below $40 — jumped up to about $150.

At least they never stopped a kid from eating because he didn't have the money that day.