Things that make me angry. This shit should be FREE for every student.
@itsOasus
I cannot fathom an adult that shooes a hungry 8yr old away after taking back their lunch because the parent couldn't pay for a school lunch.
Like what gear in their head is stuck?
I can equally not comprehend a school administrator that isn't aware that there are students going without food in their school, and has no fund ready to pay for those who can't afford lunch.
@mloxton @itsOasus It should be illegal, regardless of whether lunches are gratis. Consider that in the US if you go to the emergency room, the hospital /cannot/ refuse to treat you even if you have no insurance & not a dime to your name. They must treat emergencies & figure out how to collect later.
@koherecoWatchdog @itsOasus @mloxton There is already a system for this for when a school is in an impoverished area. It's called the "Community Eligibility Program", part of the National School Lunch Program. It allows an entire school to eat for free every day on the federal dime.
In schools that don't qualify for that, though, parents have to apply for free/reduced lunch individually, which can involve quite a bit of paperwork for someone struggling on welfare.
Many schools *do* choose to institute a "no-child-goes-hungry" rule (usually, they let the balance for those kids go negative, and the school settles up with the cafeteria provider at the end of the year), but unfortunately, you have some parents who take advantage of that and just never send money, even though they could. That leads some schools to rescind the policy.
It would be nice to have a federal law mandating free lunch, but good luck getting the American public to agree to pay for everyone's (even the rich kids') lunches on taxpayer dollars.
@LouisIngenthron @koherecoWatchdog @itsOasus
The fear that someone may cheat seems to be an ongoing barrier in the US. Seem like they would rather 100 kids go hungry than one kid cheats and gets free lunch
@mloxton @koherecoWatchdog @itsOasus 15.5 million kids in this country attend schools that participate in the CEP program I mentioned above, providing free meals to them with no paperwork required. And that doesn't count the number of kids being given free lunch under normal NSLP individual qualification.
In the OP's story, that parent *had* completed the paperwork and had been given the "Reduced" status individually, which meant their family was better off financially than the kids who receive the "Free" status.
So, I don't think your characterization is entirely accurate. Could we do better? Sure, of course. But we *are* already feeding a lot of kids who would otherwise go hungry.
@koherecoWatchdog @mloxton @itsOasus CEP is sort of a happy middle-ground between the two camps. Essentially, if a high enough percentage of the community a school draws its students from have already qualified for other benefits (like SNAP), the entire community qualifies together and the school provides free meals.
That way, a school in Martha's Vineyard will never qualify, but people struggling in rural Mississippi are able to benefit without extra burden.
And the overhead is pretty minimal compared to the old method of qualification. That's why the program has taken off so well in the last decade.
@LouisIngenthron @mloxton
I recall a welfare study that found the cost of /verification & enforcement/ of welfare eligibility was so high that it would actually be cheaper to scrap the verification entirely & have restaurants offer a gov subsidized meal valued at around ~$7 or so to whoever ordered it even if they are wealthy. That was not school related but it suggests the zero paperwork approach is the right idea.
@itsOasus