WP: ‘It’s embarrassing to the kids’: Students who owe lunch money will get only a cold jelly sandwich, district says

[skinsmarydu]

^^^  Reading that article is eye-opening.  (But things I already knew.)

 

If you can't focus because you're hungry, you're not gonna do your homework.  If you don't do homework, you don't learn.  If you don't learn, you fail the quiz/test.  If you fail multiple quizzes/tests you don't get any help because the educational network is strained.  And college is off the board. 

Leads to not giving a crap.  Leads to worse things. 

 

Feeding kids isn't hard.  As an adult, I overdo things.  I have to remember that my stomach is only the size of my fist.  It doesn't take as much as the politicians think.

[China]

Republicans Declare Banning Universal Free School Meals a 2024 Priority

 

States across the country are moving to provide universal free school meals to all our children. Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to stop them from doing just that.

 

The Republican Study Committee (of which some three-quarters of House Republicans are members) on Wednesday released its desired 2024 budget, in which the party boldly declares its priority to eliminate the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, from the School Lunch Program. Why? Because “CEP allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.”

 

The horror.

 

Of note is that the CEP is not even something every school participates in; it is a meal service program reserved for qualifying schools and districts in low-income areas. The program enables schools that predominantly serve children from low-income backgrounds to offer all students free breakfast and lunch, instead of means-testing them and having to manage collecting applications on an individual basis. As with many universal-oriented programs, it is more practically efficient and, as a bonus, lifts all boats. This is what Republicans are looking to eliminate.

 

It’s the kind of provision that many would want every school to participate in. Why not guarantee all our children are well fed as they learn and think about our world and their place in it, after all?

 

But indeed, as California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, and as of this week, Vermont, all move to provide universal free school meals in one form or another—and at least another 21 states consider similar moves—Republicans are trying to whittle down avenues to accomplish that goal.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

[Larry]

Yeah, it seems obvious that there is a point where it's cheaper to just hand free food to everybody than it is to have a bureaucracy checking everybody, and two seperate programs. 

[Renegade7]