Posted on 04/10/2014 6:07:36 AM PDT by reaganaut1
More than a million children attend public schools in New York City. About 780,000 of them are poor enough to qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch. Getting into the program requires some paperwork, which is a burden but not a terrible one; the application is just one page. So why do so many eligible children — about 250,000 — not participate?
The problem, advocates for schoolchildren say, isn’t so much aversion to the menu — today across the city, it’s roast turkey, stewed beans, sweet plantains and an oatmeal raisin cookie (plus chickpea salad, for high schoolers) — as it is the embarrassment and bullying that come from being identified as poor, from being seen taking the “free-free,” the derisive nickname New York schoolchildren give to subsidized lunches.
A stigma is an anecdotal phenomenon, but advocates say it’s real, pervasive and borne out by school-lunch participation rates, which plummet as children get older. It’s 81 percent in elementary school, 61 percent in middle school and 38 percent in high school. Many teenagers, it seems safe to assume, would rather go hungry or eat junk from vending machines than get caught in the wrong line for turkey and beans.
Here is where you would expect to hear a conservative’s bootstrap lecture telling poor kids to brown-bag it or suck it up. But the more realistic and understanding response would be to find other ways to encourage children to take the food they’re eligible for.
Here’s one we like: Make lunches free. For everyone. The city should stop collecting lunch money and pay what it takes to eliminate the “free-free” stigma.
A coalition of advocacy groups and elected officials in the city is pushing this idea. They argue that for a minuscule investment in universal free lunches
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Don’t know about you, but as a youngster I could not wait for lunchtime to queue-up for those stewed plantains. /sarc
TANSTAAFL
Yes, I agree. That used to be the case when I was growing up.
By today’s standards, my family could probably have qualified for many of the current hand-out programs, but fortunately we were brought up otherwise.
But once they grow up and get out in the world taking the ‘free free’ is a carreer
The liberal utopia. Land of a million rationalizations.
Or in this case, TANSTAAFB
Because the "parents" are lazy, irresponsible, brain dead slugs and filling out one sheet of paper IS too much of a burden. I know people that work at a public school with a high percentage of so-called minority students and have to deal with the parents or guardians or whoever the little darlings are living with that week. These cretins fail to do even the most trivial, basic tasks for their charges, like filling out simple paper work, calling in to let the school know that the kid is absent, or showing up to pick up the kids on time. I tell you these people don't think like the rest of us and are of a culture so alien and different that they should be considered foreigners.
This story about the stigma of free lunches is pure hogwash and part of the propaganda to scam more money out of people that work and giving it to the kids of poeple that don't, otherwise known as Communism.
When you pay people to have children they wouldn’t otherwise have, you get unwanted children.
The food’s so awful under the liberal nanny state rules that his makes sense in some ways.
The food’s so awful under the liberal nanny state rules that his makes sense in some ways.
What if it gets to the point that even the kids who get a free lunch don’t want it?
That would expose liberals for the little control freaks that they are.... yep, I ‘get’ why they want to do this - and it’s NOT for the ‘compassionate excuse’ they offer.
There should be no free lunches. None.
If parents can’t/won’t feed their children they should be removed from the home -—that’s neglect.
.
My grandson's school has a swipe card, he was purchasing what he was forbidden to eat. His Pediatrician, did NOT want him to gain weight as he was over weight to begin with, he packed on 15 lbs before the school sent the every 3 month charge slip home, and he got caught. Son did not take that to kindly and spoke to the principal, who promptly told him she could not stop him from doing so. Card got cancelled, he now takes a box lunch, with a no sugar drink, controlled calories Son is a type 2 diabetic, and that is how they eat, as he does the cooking 95% if the time.
If weight is held, then growth will make the weight change the doctor wants. He was to be held to no more than growth factor weight increase of 3-4 lbs per year!
TO me letting a child OVER EAT counter to their Pediatrician's advise is CHILD ABUSE on the School's part, yet the parent will get the blame.
My sister is retired from the public school system. She has told me stories about kids who come to school in dirty clothes, dirty themselves and unfed. The teachers and staff give them clean clothes and a shower before feeding them the first of three meals/days. They then wash the dirty clothes so they are ready the next day. So the question that needs to be asked is why would a young woman not have sex and by extension illgetimate kids if she don’t have to raise them?
will there be a corresponding cut in food stamps, or will they be allowed to double dip?
These kids have NO shame about stating their personal body needs in class, bragging about their latest sexual experience or brush with the law. Why would they be embarrassed about free food? Does not hang for me. I work with high school kids every day and I WISH they had a sense of shame about something. Everything is stated for public consumption by them! This story’s supposed “being ashamed to get free food” sounds like complete bs.
“There should be no free lunches. None.”
School is already “free” and costs taxpayers hundreds per student per day. Giving them a real healthy lunch would be a drop in the bucket and more beneficial to learning than most expenses at the school.
I think the only reason lunch isn’t just given out is to prevent kids from playing with extra food.
Not an easy call. I don’t want to see kids go hungry, regardless of the reason. But not an easy call.
“These kids have NO shame about stating their personal body needs in class, bragging about their latest sexual experience or brush with the law. Why would they be embarrassed about free food?”
Because being poor is not cool.
Sexually active and lawbreaking is cool.
Free = someone else pays.
When everything is “free” and no one is working, and all the rich peoples’ wealth has been confiscated by the state, then the dream of a communist paradise will have been achieved, and all will be equally miserable.
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