No free lunch: Schools get tough on deadbeats

[TrailerParkJawa]

I think one of the orginal idea's for school's providing lunches was because both parent's work and didn't alwasy have time to provide food. I'm not saying its valid but its something I remember from the fuzzy recesses of my mind as a child of the 70's and 80's. My grade school only had hot food once a week but every day we got milk for 10 cents.

My middle and high school had for cafeteria's but you had to pay in cash or not eat. I honestly dont know if they were run for profit or subsidized.

[ArmorPierce]

It frankly seems absurd to me that schools feed the kids. Wouldn't parents prefer to have more control over their own kids' diet? This entire school lunch administration should be scrapped, the money returned to the budget, and the parents told to pack a damned lunch for their kids.

And if a parent doesn't pack a lunch for a kid, and the kid doesn't eat breakfast (which a lot of kids don't eat) they starve? Kid doesn't eat because his parent's are jack asses? Do you advocate taking the kids away from the parents for neglect? You'd have to probably do one or the other.

I am of the opinion that if a kid doesn't qualify for free lunch (parent's income is too high) but they don't have anything to eat that they should be thrown a little something such as grilled cheese sandwich and a milk.

[Darth Wong]

That's a retarded argument. If the parents are such deadbeats that they won't feed their kids, what the fuck makes anyone think the solution is free school lunches? The kids are still going to be horribly malnourished, and now their worthless parents are going to use the school lunches as a way of convincing themselves that it's OK to send their kids to school hungry.

I've seen parents like this. The kind of worthless parent who drops off a kid at a subsidized daycare so hungry that he tries to steal other kids' food, because that's the only meal the kid gets all day, and the parent has become reliant on it.

Parents who won't feed their kids are criminally negligent. Feeding their kids a shitty cheap sandwich at school doesn't solve that problem.

[Vympel]

This whole school lunch thing, is it strictly an American phenommenon? Because I know that it's unheard of here. All kids bring a packed lunch, or they bring money and buy food from the school canteen.

[Stark]

And it's fascinating to see these 'nanny state' attitudes from Americans, whereas heavily socialised countries like Canada and Australia have nothing of the sort. It's intruiging that Americans believe schools should - indeed, must - provide for children... but the government shouldn't provide for anyone.

[Kanastrous]

Maybe this is hair-splitting, but the public schools providing something *is* essentially the government providing that thing, since the schools are government-funded.

Which really just emphasizes the disconnect Stark noted, even more.

[Broomstick]

I wish to briefly review school lunches in the US, to make sure the confusion is minimal.

Most public schools offer lunches for sale of some sort. This may either be in a cafeteria, or as sealed box lunches (which may or may not be warmed). These are for purchase without subsidy by the student. While this may be done through the school district it's nothing unusual for it to be outsourced to a private service or (yes, sad but true) fast food franchises. Alternatively, a child may bring a lunch from home.

The "free lunch" program is a program for those who qualify (poverty level income and slightly above) to provide a lunch at reduced or no cost. Yes, it's a social safety net, just as food stamps and WIC are. In most school districts the children receiving this aid are a minority of the student body. Most students will either be paying full cost or bringing from home.

Despite occasional financial issues in my own home growing up I never got a free lunch because we never qualified for one. All my lunches were either purchased at full price or brought from home.

Parents who make too much to qualify for the free lunch and yet refuse to provide their children with either lunch or the means by which to legally obtain it are neglectful and if it happens on a regular basis then the school authorities are legally obligated to report this neglect to the proper authorities. Penalties can be as harsh as removing the children from the home, although usually they'll try to talk some sense into the parents first.

[Minischoles]

This whole school lunch thing, is it strictly an American phenommenon? Because I know that it's unheard of here. All kids bring a packed lunch, or they bring money and buy food from the school canteen.

Nope not at all, at least not here in the UK, where I believe free school lunches have been available for a long time. You can still come in and pay for the food, but for someone on reduced means its just a simple form to fill in and the school provides a lunch paid for by the government.

[Darth Wong]

The "free lunch" program is a program for those who qualify (poverty level income and slightly above) to provide a lunch at reduced or no cost. Yes, it's a social safety net, just as food stamps and WIC are. In most school districts the children receiving this aid are a minority of the student body. Most students will either be paying full cost or bringing from home.

It seems absurdly inefficient to create this school lunch system, which must necessarily compete with other parts of the school system for funding and space, and which must be subject to all sorts of regulations and administrative concerns, when the only people who need it are people who are already on some form of social assistance anyway and should probably just get more food assistance instead of creating an entire bureaucracy just to give lunches to their kids.

[Broomstick]

The "free lunch" program is a program for those who qualify (poverty level income and slightly above) to provide a lunch at reduced or no cost. Yes, it's a social safety net, just as food stamps and WIC are. In most school districts the children receiving this aid are a minority of the student body. Most students will either be paying full cost or bringing from home.

It seems absurdly inefficient to create this school lunch system, which must necessarily compete with other parts of the school system for funding and space

The funding is from the Federal government, not from the school system funds generated locally. It is in addition to school funding, not taken from it.

...and which must be subject to all sorts of regulations and administrative concerns, when the only people who need it are people who are already on some form of social assistance anyway and should probably just get more food assistance instead of creating an entire bureaucracy just to give lunches to their kids.

It's Federal food assistance, given in the form of an actual lunch. The Federal government also used to distribute cheese, flour, and several other forms of actual food to people, too.

[Sea Skimmer]

And it's fascinating to see these 'nanny state' attitudes from Americans, whereas heavily socialised countries like Canada and Australia have nothing of the sort. It's intruiging that Americans believe schools should - indeed, must - provide for children... but the government shouldn't provide for anyone.

Public schools in America are funded and controlled at a very local level in almost every state. Most control comes from elected officials independent of all other regular government. The district I was in for example was real small with about 4,000 students, most of its budget came and still comes from local property taxes, the rate of which is set by the elected school board. The state provides some funding, but the only control it exercises is in setting a basic standards, and regulations on how schools can spend money so they don’t do anything really stupid. People don’t mind paying money so much for public services in America when they know its going to be spent locally. The US is a huge country compared to the populated areas of Australia and Canada. The result of this system is that quality of schools and the range of services offered can vary enormously.

[Themightytom]

Public schools in America are funded and controlled at a very local level in almost every state. Most control comes from elected officials independent of all other regular government. The district I was in for example was real small with about 4,000 students, most of its budget came and still comes from local property taxes, the rate of which is set by the elected school board. The state provides some funding, but the only control it exercises is in setting a basic standards, and regulations on how schools can spend money so they don’t do anything really stupid. People don’t mind paying money so much for public services in America when they know its going to be spent locally. The US is a huge country compared to the populated areas of Australia and Canada. The result of this system is that quality of schools and the range of services offered can vary enormously.

NH is a good example of this, because there is no state income tax or sales tax, and most off the state and local income comes from property tax, this means that the schools are funded primarily by people who own property, not all of whom are happy about it. For a while there was a huge issue around the fact that with differing income levels property values were asessed differently and property taxes were applied differently from twon to town, so rich towns with small families had absurdly good schools, while poor towns with high populations had terrible schools.

They tried to level the funding alotted to schools by the state and that was a giant CF because suddenly the rich towns were paying for the poor towns and ALL of the schools were underfunded. Then the no child left behind clusterfuck was introduced in which failing schools recieved federal money, and successful schools didn't, coupled with the fact that the entire adminsitration of a school would be fired after three years of "Fail" status. This resulted in a bizarre balancing act of supportive programs designed around target areas while in school curriculum was targeted towards test taking ability. Schools had to fail to recieve the funding they needed for their budget, but not fail TOO badly or the staff got fired. This created secondary clusterfucks when it became obvious that the English language learners and Special needs children couldn't be accurately tested using the standardized method the government wanted.

Every time someone has had a "Good" idea it has resulted in counterproductive side effects that render it a horrible one. none of the ideas were particularly well thought out and most of them were politically motivated. The original school lunch program was a "Good" idea given what was happening, but it wasn't taken far enough in either direction.

one model removes significant parent involvement. Parents dress the kids, send them to the bus stop, the bus picks up the kids, they get breakfast at school and lunch at school they attend "Afterschool" and come home at six. Both parents in this model work 9-5. Afterschool enrichment, summer school enrichment, Free or Reduced lunch, all programs usually use the same eligibility criteria. Even THOSE are shared, iff you get foodstamps, you auto qualiffy for free afterschool (If your school has a federally supported afterschool and summer school, not every school does but a lot of the larger cities with denser populations off poverty do.)

The other model is the traditional, one parent works, one stays at home, or works part time. Kids are given breakfast and a packed lunch, they are dropped off at school and picked up at 2:30. parents help them with their homework and then feed them a nutritional dinner. Parents have some kind of awesome summer vacation planned for some kids, or shuffle them off to loving relatives, and they don't need summer school any way because they did great during the year.

model 1 evolved to accomodate low income families, model 2 to accomodate middle class and better. neither model takes into account that some parents are not invested in their children, that is the cohort that makes everything look rediculous.

Broomstick has pointed out the cheese sandwich program is an ad hoc solution for parents who didn't do paperwork a government that requires paperwork, and a school that has no money. kamastros debated at length the absurdity of schools providing food in the first place etc. I was TRYING to point out that intervention initiatives could stablize the problem over the long term before I got side tracked defending nutrition and psychology, but Stark is making me think I should just move to Australia.

I will need to research whether there are poor people in Australia, I may need vocational retraining if there isn't a high demand for social workers. I could always go with the side job of kung fu instructor but I am not sure I can take on a kangaroo.

[mr friendly guy]

I was TRYING to point out that intervention initiatives could stablize the problem over the long term before I got side tracked defending nutrition and psychology, but Stark is making me think I should just move to Australia.

I will need to research whether there are poor people in Australia, I may need vocational retraining if there isn't a high demand for social workers. I could always go with the side job of kung fu instructor but I am not sure I can take on a kangaroo.

For the record, in Western Australia my observation is that we don't have enough social workers in the public health system. I can't speak for social work positions in other government departments though. In the health system we are getting social workers who do part time, thus some days we are missing social workers.

I am pretty sure the general public's perception of social workers in general would be different from what they do in the public health system, which IMO is important, and they generally do a good job of it - that is get

a) people into nursing homes / hostel once all the medical assessments are done. Problems arise when the person isn't exactly old (eg they just blew their brains with alcohol so they can't live independently) so some nursing homes understandable object as its not their usual clientale.

b) help discharge patients who need extra SOCIAL services. For example the old person who now needs insulin but can't inject themselves, the old person who needs things like " meals on wheels" or people to pop in and just check up on them etc.

c) ensure the paper work is done for travel forms (ie patients from rural areas may need to visit metropolitan areas for treatment, so the government will subsidise their travel)

d) get patients who are trying to.. (how can I put it, outstay their welcome), out of the hospital. What I mean by that is these patients now have their medical issues under control, however they have social problems which may prevent discharge. Examples would be they are homeless or the live in atrocious conditions (sometimes of their own making).

What the social worker will do, usually involves finding them temporary accomodation or getting services in place, even if we get some service to clean their house for them. Trust me, I learnt to hold my indignation in place that these people couldn't even clean their own place. Its better that way as long as we get them out to make way for more sicker patients.

Edit - there are poor people here, but I am sure your statement was tongue in cheek. However as you can see from some of other threads, the poor here get a pretty good deal with welfare, sometimes too good a deal.

[Glocksman]

In my old High How is that even allowed?

I was actually under the impression this sort of thing was quite common in the US. Like Mike, the idea that a school should provide food is bizarre, but the image of corporatised cafeteria spaces in US highschools training the new generation of fat unhealthy eaters isn't a new one to me. Given what's said often about the poor level of funding or resources in US schools it doesn't surprise me that these kind of things are attractive to administrators.

When I was in school during the 1970's to the mid 1980's in my county, it worked like this.

Students who were in kindergarten through 8th grade either ate the school provided lunch (free and reduced price were available for qualifying families), brought their own, went home to eat during lunch, or in 7th and 8th grades could go eat at a restaurant during lunch if you brought a permission slip from home.

In high school, you could do all of the above or pay 'going' rates (about what a burger would cost at McD's, for example), and eat fast foods (burgers, pizza slices, etc) made in the school cafeteria though you could leave campus and eat out without producing a permission slip.

Throughout your entire time in school, you could eat breakfast (either full price, reduced, or free) but it wasn't something most people did.

Ironically enough, at the time we had soda vending machines in my high school cafeteria that were prohibited from selling carbonated beverages.
You could purchase a sugar laden non-carbonated drink but a zero calorie diet Coke was verboten.

[His Divine Shadow]

Seems to me that in Scandinavia we got a school lunch program that even get some left leaning people here crying nanny state

[Illuminatus Primus]

Debates about nutrition content of school lunches? Why have the government deciding what your children should eat at all? FEED YOUR OWN KIDS. That's the only way you can guarantee the quality of what they're eating. I honestly can't believe so many people think this is some kind of revolutionary concept.

I don't think anyone thinks the modern generation is producing parents with this basic level of competence. That's horrifically depressing, but probably true. Something like 40% of 5th graders are obese or at least overweight. 5th graders! Ten years ago I was a grammar school student, and I swear the kids that age I see now are significantly worse in shape than my class was with the occasional fat kid.

[ray245]

Here in Singapore, you do need to pay for the food you buy in the School canteen at a reduced price. However, if you are from a low income family, you get a free coupon to exchange for food.

[Junghalli]

And it's fascinating to see these 'nanny state' attitudes from Americans, whereas heavily socialised countries like Canada and Australia have nothing of the sort. It's intruiging that Americans believe schools should - indeed, must - provide for children... but the government shouldn't provide for anyone.

It's probably easier to get public support for stuff like school lunches than for social safety nets. School lunches are for kids, who are naturally easy to sympathize with, and since it's vaguely education-related it invokes the whole "hand-up, not hand-out" meme that enjoys some popularity here. Say "welfare" or "social assistance" and Americans tend to get mental images of 400 pound hambeasts with 8 kids sitting at home all day watching cable and eating KFC on the taxpayer tab.