Posted on 10/09/2011 4:59:17 AM PDT by reaganaut1
In the last year, Oakland schools have introduced and expanded a host of programs, some federally subsidized, to feed students at school and home. Dozens of parents now line up outside schools, at the end of school days, to receive plastic bags of food provided by a food bank.
“Kids are coming to school hungrier and hungrier,” said Allison Rodman, a mother of two students, who is involved in the Oakland School Food Alliance, a group working to improve school food.
Rodolfo Perez, outreach coordinator for Greenleaf Elementary School in East Oakland, said: “Hungry kids cannot learn,” adding, “There are a lot of parents that are out of work right now.”
According to the Census Bureau, some 200,000 people in Alameda County, representing 13.5 percent of the population, live below the poverty line. The figure was 10.7 percent a year earlier.
Demand for free food is increasing in the county. In September, the Alameda County Community Food Bank received 3,770 calls to its emergency food helpline — the highest volume of calls to date. The second-highest volume of calls was in August.
Robyn Sakamoto, a dietitian with the Alameda County Public Health Department, said that making sure students eat breakfast helped them learn better. “You are going to get more quality instructional time having a child with a full stomach,” she said.
Today, more than 90 Oakland schools offer a free breakfast to all students. At some schools, students are allowed to eat breakfast once class has started, which removes the hurdle of showing up early to get a free meal in the cafeteria.
When students eat together in class, officials say, the social stigma is removed from the neediest students, who otherwise might eat alone.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You shouldn’t have children if you cannot feed them. It is not the responsibility of the public education system to feed your children.
When Jenny Granholm was governor here, she gave all college students food stamps regardless of need. We just cut some 30,000 off.
Sheeeyit. The fattest hungry kids you've ever seen.
I must be naive, but doesn’t mom get enough money meant to buy the children food?
socialism is a cancer on this nation. It takes root, it grows, it corrupts, it spreads and it eventually kills. Nourishing it only hastens the process and curing it is typically just as deadly.
If those kids are truly hungry, it’s because mama traded the EBT card for heroin.
Have those lined up turn their pockets out. You would be amazed how many lottery tickets fall out, along with the obligatory bag of weed.
The nation is being scammed to death. Once we figure that out, and stop subsidizing the permanent parasite society, then you might see some truly hungry people.
She has to spend that monet on beer, crack, meth, and pot.
“YoIt is not the responsibility of the public education system to feed your children.”
Agreed. Not to put too fine a point on your comment, but it shouldn’t matter which government agency, IT IS NOT THE PUBLIC’S RESPONSIBILITY TO FEED ANYBODY’S CHILDREN. As you said, if you can’t feed ‘em, don’t have ‘em.
More importantly, these kids are not starving. Rather, the inner-city parents that send their kids to school hungry are just too damn lazy and irresponsible to worry about feeding their kids. They expect and demand that the public education system feed their kids
(’Cause dey be needin’ to takes care o’ dey bidnez and ain’t gotz no time be worrin’ ‘bout it. Dat wut de skool be fo’. Obama say he gunna pay fo’ dey groceries, car note, and billz from hiz stash. So shut up and feed dey chillren breffix, Fool. No wut I meen, homey?)
“Kids are coming to school hungrier and hungrier,”
I don’t think this is because people can’t afford to give their kids breakfast.
IMHO, this is because a lot of these kids come from such dysfunctional families there isn’t enough family discipline in the morning to make sure kids eat. I’ve seen it, and and I’ve argued it with libs, who insist the reason certain kids do bad in school is “socioeconomic”.
No, it’s cultural. I’ll bet none of these kids parents come to parent night, either.
Just because they bare “hungrier” that doesn’t mean they don’t have enough to eat. You can be fat and still be “hungrier” as you crave more food. Isn’t it true that many “poor” families are corpulent?
Just because they are “hungrier” that doesn’t mean they don’t have enough to eat. You can be fat and still be “hungrier” as you crave more food. Isn’t it true that many “poor” families are corpulent?
Why shouldn’t they come to school hungry? The parent knows the child will get fed by the state. She can shoo him out of the house, go back to bed and wait for her connection to show up in the afternoon to hook her up.
Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw awhile back. It read, “Can’t feed ‘em? Don’t breed ‘em.”
Over forty percent of the children in the north kansas city school district get free lunches. Lots of single parents.
Then maybe their parents should feed them ...
“Hungry kids cannot learn,”
That's been the claim of the Free Food Santa Clauses for half a century now. So show me some evidence that feeding them makes them learn any better. And then explain to me how starving children in Kenya will walk five miles to school with NO food for days, and five miles back every day, and can learn as well or better than these mollycoddled welfare spawn.
This isn't about learning. It's about using public schools as pipelines for redistributionist schemes.
If you are spending your time in class eating—you are NOT learning anything. You are only learning about how to get free food-—for your kids in the future.
So?...These kids, every day that they attend their tuition-free school, are given “free” food, paid for by government taking money from their neighbor. What permanent and indelible lesson is being taught to these kids every school day?
Answer: The voting mob and government force can threaten their neighbor into submission and slavery to pay for “free” stuff.
Add to this that the best any government school ever did was teach lukewarm and generic Protestantism, and now are utterly godless...well!...**That** is a prescription for social collapse in the voting booth and with mobs in the streets.
( We know what Christ does with the lukewarm. He spits them out of His mouth!)
OK, so buy a few tons of oatmeal and cook it up every morning. Filling and nutritious.
If they get tired of oatmeal every day?
Then they aren't truly hungry.
I won't even discuss whether it is proper for the government to feed a child whose parent gets an EBT card for free food. It's not.
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