In some places, it gets even sillier. There are schools in challenged neighborhoods where everybody gets free breakfast and lunch. My favorite was one where some of the little darlin's would come to school with their McDs breakfast, pick up the required free breakfast and throw the free meal away except for the milk.
About those packaged meals: It's really sad. In HeadStart programs within public schools, the tots get free meals. They fed those little 4 year olds stuff like plastic-wrapped pastries and as a "learning experience" they had to open the plastic packaging themselves. I wonder how many moms would feed that crap to their toddlers if they were in charge of feeding them.
Besides which, I just don't get the free meal program. Shouldn't the parents have to pay for the meals with Food Stamps? The gov is already providing them money to feed their families.
Oh yes. The waste in the free lunch/breakfast program is epic. The mandate is that free lunches must include servings of this/that/and the other. It is so horrific, the kids don't want it, but everything must be put on the plate. So the kids walk straight to the garbage can and scrape it off.
Now, I was raised to consider the waste of food to be a sin (those starving children in India), but I have hard time blaming the kids.
About those packaged meals: It's really sad. In HeadStart programs within public schools, the tots get free meals. They fed those little 4 year olds stuff like plastic-wrapped pastries and as a "learning experience" they had to open the plastic packaging themselves. I wonder how many moms would feed that crap to their toddlers if they were in charge of feeding them.
Yes. As I said before, I don't even mind the "healthy" mandate. You can serve wonderful meals that are low in fats/calories/sodium/whatever. Instead everything that is served, other than something like a shriveled orange, is very low quality heat-and-serve. The only thing I'd ever eat from the cafeteria was a salad, and even that was a handful of lukewarm iceberg lettuce straight from a bag and a few diced tomatoes sprinkled on top.
Besides which, I just don't get the free meal program. Shouldn't the parents have to pay for the meals with Food Stamps? The gov is already providing them money to feed their families.
I will say this: a few our students really depended on the breakfast and lunch because of the general lack of care at home. My philosophical problems with the free lunch program aside, it was awful to think that the food served in our cafeteria was the only food a child might get that day.