Posted on 05/27/2015 9:13:36 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
For five weeks this summer, Napa County children can get a free lunch at one of five school sites in Napa.
“More than 49 percent of our students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch during the school year,” said Sunita Dutt-Ellenby, food services coordinator.
The free lunch program dovetails with the Migrant Education program, the federally funded program designed to provide supplementary educational and support services to children and youth of migrant families, ages 3-21.
Because school district staff will already be working in District kitchens making breakfast, lunch and snacks for Migrant Education recipients, Dutt-Ellenby decided to expand the lunch offering to help all needy children.
The children must be accompanied by an adult, although the adult is not eligible for a free meal, and all of the food must be eaten at one sitting. No registration or documentation is required.
(Excerpt) Read more at napavalleyregister.com ...
In the summer, our local park gives out free lunch to anyone over 18 yrs of age . Only in America!
So their families won’t receive food stamps, WIC, gov’t cheese and etc.?
Well how you gonna expect another generation of voters to grow-up believing that there IS a Free Lunch unless you give them a Free Lunch?
and all of the food must be eaten at one sitting”
...what happens if they don’t finish?
napadad61 - 2 hours ago
I honestly can't think of a better way to spend my tax dollars than feeding nutritious food to children who might not otherwise get it. This is what a real community does. Great idea!
Things like this and especially most of the comments on the original article make me glad we left California almost twenty years ago. There was no hope.
“The children must be accompanied by an adult, although the adult is not eligible for a free meal, and all of the food must be eaten at one sitting. No registration or documentation is required.”
Couple of things strike me:
Their parents don’t have jobs?
Will the kids be bused in for meals?
Are they so poor they cannot feed themselves?
49%? Really!?
What do they do for meals the rest of summer and on the weekends?
You mean to tell me they are so poor we need to feed them and food stamps “Do Not” cover their needs?
Gimme a break.
Yeah, they do this type of program here, too. So, the parent just sends the kid through the line multiple times and stuffs the extra meals in the conveniently brought along stroller. I've actually seen this racket run multiple times. Who's going to tell a kid they've already been through the line, and they can't have their free food? Nobody. It would be "racist."
So the children “Must” be accompanied by an adult, who can only longingly watch the children eat but, they cannot?
Oh, that’s rich.
Is the idea to starve the parents to death and make those children wards of the state?
Maybe the adults should stop going to fast food for their meals and cutback on the prime rib and seafood.
I hear tell you can pick up 10# of potatoes for around $5 bucks and chicken is less than a buck per pound fresh or frozen.
Heck, those giant cans of tuna are only $3.50. Combine that with noodles, peas and cream of mushroom soup amd for another $5 you can feed 5 or 6 people.
Wonderful!
So why do I have to go buy and pay for food for my children?
What are food stamps for again??
If I refuse to feed my kids, they charge me with Neglect
Who’s paying for this lunch, the feds or the locals? If the feds are paying for it then it is an unconstitutional use of federal taxpayer dollars since the feds have no explicit constitutional autorization by the states to tax and spend for such purposes.
I find the “school lunch program” to be a rather odd thing.
Growing up, there was a significant stigma to receiving that colorful card with the punch out places that the free/reduced kids got each week. Many parents who qualified based on income just didn’t bother to fill out the paperwork. Their kids didn’t go hungry. Indeed some ate better than I did!
But then several grant programs and other funding sources for public schools began using the “free and reduced lunch” eligibility numbers as a basis for granting funding. So schools began a full-on campaign to get folks to sign up, even if they wouldn’t actually USE it - (why? Because they get $$$ for every kid in the program, even if they don’t ever use it).
Then began the additional meals - breakfast. In the mix, as part of the de-stigmatizing of the “card”, ALL students were programmed into a database - regardless of their status in the free/reduced lunch program. All students had to pre-pay, and they all go through with an ID, or fingerprint. No stigma! Kind of like the EBD/SNAP programs. No more embarrassing food stamp booklets... no more stigma... yeah! More entitlement!
Then after the breakfast programs got going good, then came the after-school food programs.
I’m still trying to figure out how my wife and her brother survived growing up without participating in such a program. Their single-income household (her father was a farm hand) made an insanely tiny salary, while working harder than 95%+ of Americans... and he abhorred any form of handout. His kids NEVER missed a meal or a genuine need. They never had cable TV. Didn’t have a telephone in the home until my wife was 15. They paid cash for almost everything (didn’t really like credit either).
Then, when I became a teacher, I saw it - just as these programs were seeing their greatest expansion - kids and parents having their arms twisted to sign up. Literally, a guilt trip put on them - because if they didn’t sign up, they were robbing other kids, and indeed the entire school, of funding and all the ‘great stuff” that would come with money/grants.
I witnessed trays of food dumped in the garbage untouched. I saw kids with more expensive clothing, and parents with nicer homes and cars than us in the program...
I also saw the genuinely poor, who - like my father-in-law, made do - kept their kids fed, all on FAR less than the “poverty level”. At the same time, I witnessed families with income that should have been sufficient often in large part due to welfare and other government programs, but not always) who’s children were always hungry. Parents spent every $ that came in on drugs, liquor, tobacco, and a variety of “optional” stuff - while failing completely to provide for their children.
And through it all, my views became quite conflicted as both a practicing born-again Christian, but as a frustrated teacher and taxpayer. The abuses seem to far outweigh the genuine NEED. I got really tired of students coming to school with a wad of cash in their pocket bigger than my bank account, all while getting free lunch and so much more.
I’m still rather torn - and frustrated with the abuse I see all around me here - and I see FAR more of it in the ministry! Generational welfare dependency. Generational Food Stamp dependency. Extra-ordinarily poor decision making practices. Huge waste... and an entire generation well-versed in scamming every system and assistance program.
But my views have settled on this - I will help however I can, whenever I can as led by the Lord. If I am being scammed while acting out of the Spirit’s lead in my heart - they have scammed God and that is between them and Him.
But the government has to be the worst possible avenue of “help” ever created. The waste and abject abuse is staggering. And these programs are just one example.
Of course, this is happening is school districts around the country, wherever last year's 'kids' from Central America were relocated.
Surely you Jest! You can't expect these poor lost souls to plan, purchase and then prepare food during a busy day of laying around on the Porch, getting your hair done, nails done and tending to the needs of the Baby Daddys do you? If you cut out their Food stamps by providing free summer meals whatcha expect them sell to purchase their Cigarettes, Panther Wizz, clothing and spring break trips on? That's just mean...and Racist! /s
They're probably the children of illegal aliens used to harvest the grapes.
This is also the case for many counties here in Ohio.
Update: In the Ohio case mentioned above, the fed is not paying for the lunches, but rather they are paid for by local churches.
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