Posted on 05/24/2017 6:22:41 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As a candidate, Mayor de Blasio promised to enact universal free school lunch in New York City public schools. The Mayor has aggressively pursued policies to decrease inequality in the City and clearly understands the important links among food access, health, and learning. From affordable housing to universal pre-K, the Mayor has worked to address the needs of poor and working class New Yorkers. But universal school lunch sticks out as an unfulfilled pledge.
I’ve written previously about the merits of eliminating school lunch fees and getting more kids to eat lunch at school. A hungry child can’t learn or realize her full potential. Hungry kids find it harder to do what is good for their health and engage in a natural part of growing up: being physically active and playing.
Many kids in New York City public schools do already qualify for free or reduced price lunch, but many of those who are eligible do not participate in the lunch program. What stops them? It’s simple: Stigma. Bullying. Shaming.
Students, especially in high school, skip the lunch program to avoid the embarrassment associated with being poor. Our schools provide textbooks, pencils, and other supplies to all students, regardless of income, but when it comes to food, public schools discriminate. Forcing kids to identify themselves as poor results in lasting shame and harm to fragile psyches. And make no mistake, the stigma is real and painful. It creates a false sense of inferiority, which is especially hard to shake when it is established at a young age....
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...
No, it is all wrong. It is not a right.
These days, kids don't bring lunch money to the lunchroom. The parents are expected to keep an account funded online (or the kid goes to the office in the morning to pay into the account). So I assume nobody knows who is on free lunch.
So we brown bagged it.
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Nothing that someone else has to pay for is a ‘right.’ That includes food, shelter, clothing, education, and medical care. None of these things are rights.
Well, unless we are all slaves of the state and the state is entitled to the fruits of our labor. Then everything is a “right” and our wonderful leaders get to decide who gets what. :-(
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And people think the 13th ended slavery and involuntary-servitude in the U.S.
When I was in high school I’d buy a coke, a bag of Cheetos and spend the rest on cigarettes. lol
Like one person I knew 60 years ago. Poor, he ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at lunch at his one room school every day.
One day he decided he deserved another kid’s lunch and just before lunch, he was excused to go to the outhouse. Passing the cloak room, he stole the heaviest school lunch he found and ran off into the woods.
He opened and found he had stolen... six hickory nuts and a hammer.
It could be another case where the kids or the parents are undocumented but scared to sign up because ICE might use that to find and deport them.(now that Obama is gone)
But the author didn't want to use that argument.
More ‘immigrants’ going hungry in America the ‘richest’ country in the world’. Scared to get their 'free' lunches.
We never had cafeteria until high school so if you didn’t pack lunch you didn’t eat. Don’t recall any free lunch.
Listing endless positives of a child not being hungry doesn’t make something a right. If it requires the time and resources of somebody else it is not a right but a privilege. You have a right to protect and provide for yourself and your family, you don’t have the right to take from others to do so.
This is why we need to get rid of income tax and implement a consumption tax. It’s the only way to get away from “vote for me and I’ll take from somebody else and give it to you” politicians.
When my middle daughter had her baby the social worker at the hospital was so persistent in trying to sign her up for all the programs my daughter had to tell the nurses not to allow her back in the room. It was insane, the people act like they have to sign everyone up for everything. They try to insist you do the paperwork to prove to them you don’t qualify, while they insist you must qualify. My daughter refused to do any of their paperwork and the lady could not understand why, my daughter finally told her she was not asking for anything so her finances were none of their business.
I truly believe some of the fraud is perpetuated/encouraged by those signing people up. They tell people to omit one income or other shady things in filling out forms.
Actually, there is a low cost, beneficial way to provide school lunches, which by all accounts are popular. But not through the federal government.
At the start, school lunches were wildly popular, especially among the poor, because they provided lower income children nutrition they weren’t (often couldn’t) get at home. Plus they saved parents a huge amount of time from making bag lunches.
But then the feds started to add endless regulations and requirements, in the hundreds, under threat that if they all weren’t obeyed, their school lunch money would be cut off.
So how to do it better? Start with block grants to the states, and by using the surreal US agricultural system.
That is, to stabilize crop prices, the US expensively warehouses an enormous amount of food, which for the most part expensively rots. As Reagan proved with the great cheese giveaway, flooding the market with government cheese had no, zero effect on the price or availability of cheese.
So why not direct a lot of this surplus to the states, to feed schoolchildren? But wait, there’s more.
States also have agricultural surpluses, with seasonal crops grown in those states. So why not add them to the mix? For example, apples. “Here is your school lunch. And help yourself to an apple, as an add-on.”
Oddly enough, the block grants would be considerably less than what is spent right now. At the same time, the money spent on stabilizing farm prices would go to a good cause for a change.
Free Lunch but you have to listen to the Commie Propaganda
Nothing that I pay for is a flippin’ right unless I AGREE to pay for it of my own free will.
Freeloading liberal idiots need to go hungry for a while. Maybe learn to EARN their keep for a change.
That is an incredible story!! Good for you/your friend for explaining REALITY to this hounding hawker!!
I think that there HAS to be some sort of incentive for these schools to be hawking/PUSHING these “FREE” lunches, so much.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is just another kickback program, to pay minorities/’assistance’ groups, etc. Kind of like the toll takers at the DFW airport. I told hubby I think they charge a toll....to get IN/OUT of airport, just to give minorities a job.
There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. There is, however, taxpayer supported lunches.
HuffPo on Universal School Lunch https://t.co/952ONXcL0U @NYCProgressives @BLACaucusNYC @MMViverito @JulissaFerreras @DanGarodnick @NYCMayor— David Sandman (@DavidSandman1) May 23, 2017
It’s Lunch Time for NYC Kids: New blog by CEO @DavidSandman1 https://t.co/YwJcLOKdcV @HuffPostBlog #SDoH #universalfreelunch— NYSHealth Foundation (@nys_health) May 23, 2017
It’s Lunch Time for NYC Kids: New blog by CEO @DavidSandman1 https://t.co/YwJcLOKdcV @HuffPostBlog #SDoH #universalfreelunch— NYSHealth Foundation (@nys_health) May 23, 2017
He's mad that free lunches are about to be axed, per the 2018 state budget. Sounds like someone needs to look into this 'foundation'.
It looked like every black kid in the school was in there eating breakfast. There wasn't one kid in there who wasn't black.
My kid bought lunch once a week--they ate lunch and breakfast for free. Everyday.
They’ve taught the freeloaders they all have a right to all of your hard earned money.
I still don’t understand how free slop is a good thing.
Well said!
Schools should not even offer lunch. You bring your own or buy something from a sandwich machine.
I’m old enough to remember when it was on parents to make sure that their kids have a lunch for school. Now it’s a “right.”
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