All because Michelle is a lard-ass.
Posted on 10/21/2015 9:03:39 AM PDT by CASchack
LONDONDERRY — The school board on Tuesday night unanimously voted to send a letter to elected officials asking for help with solving a dispute between the school district and the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding school lunches.
The letter signals that Londonderry is gearing up for a fight with federal regulators over the government’s intention to classify Londonderry High School’s kitchen areas as a “processing facility” — akin, the school district says, to Tyson Foods, and subject to the same regulations.
“To some degree, it feels to us like it’s vindictive, because we made a move to do something that we felt was appropriate for us,” said Superintendent Nate Greenberg, referring to the decision to pull the high school from the federal school lunch program this year.
“It’s not ‘it feels vindictive.’ It is vindictive,” replied school board vice chair John Laferriere.
School officials say they made the decision because students weren’t eating the food and the program was wasting supplies and money.
Leaving the program meant the high school is forgoing commodity products — certain foods the USDA provides at very low prices, including cheese, diced chicken and peaches, dining services director Amanda Venezia and school district business administrator Peter Curro explained at the school board meeting Tuesday.
Though state surplus processing and regional USDA officials approved a preliminary exemption for the high school to receive and process the district’s other schools’ commodity shipments, Venezia said, it ran into roadblocks at the national USDA office.
The school district says the designation would force Londonderry to comply with costly and labor-intensive regulations. These include a requirement to submit an “accountability and reconciliation plan” documenting various aspects of production and waste.
The kitchen would also be subject to “more than monthly” inspections, Venezia said.
Earlier Tuesday, representatives of the USDA’s national office told the Union Leader they did not yet have enough information to comment; it was the same response the USDA made Monday.
Venezia told the school board the district receives an annual total of 28,000 cases of commodity products in nine shipments for the elementary and middle schools. But due to the lack of an approved plan this school year, it has already missed three shipments, forcing Venezia to purchase foods privately.
School board members and school district officials were clearly angry at the USDA’s classification.
“We’re being stonewalled, and we’re being held hostage under our own program,” Laferriere said. “Essentially, we want to get off the federal teat. At the end of the day, that’s what it is. And we’re getting penalized for it.”
Curro said he is particularly dismayed because the new program this year has thus far seemed to be successful. Participation in the high school lunch program is up by 4 percentage points, despite higher prices, and sales are up as well.
Due to its departure from the national school lunch program, Londonderry also must now pay for the students who receive free or reduced-price meals — about 8 percent of the high school population.
The letter approved by the school board will go to the governor, state congressional delegation, commissioner of education and maybe local state representatives.
"Nice place you have here....it would be a shame if anything happened to it."
They are afraid the school will make good food that the kids would actually eat.
I am a former public school teacher, and you will not believe what is served to your children. It is unfit for dogs.
It’s way past time we got the Federal government out of education entirely. The biggest problem is, if they provide money for something, they want control. Not just a little control, mind you, but total control.
Unfortunately, the costs of everything are raised on the expectation that the payer won’t care what they are as the money is “free.”
Unfortunately, the Feds have turned this into an offer the schools can’t refuse.
I agree with you to a certain degree, but believe it goes deeper than that. It’s about control and money. Like all government agencies, when Chewie’s lunch program was instituted, the Dept of Ag had to create thousands of new jobs and hire people to fill those positions. If there are enough schools that withdraw from the program it will force the reduce the Dept of Ag’s budget and power and force them to layoff all the employees they hired to run this boondogle. It’s not about the children or what is in their best interest. It’s about money and power. Got to set an example and keep the sheeple in line.
“Unfortunately, the Feds have turned this into an offer the schools can’t refuse.”
Probably the thing to do is have five different restaurants come in one each day and cater the lunches. Believe me, outside companies would jump at the chance. And, they are already covered by the relevant laws.
Thank you for referencing that article CASchack. Please bear in mind that the following critique is directed at the article and not at you.
The states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to tax and spend for INTRAstate schooling purposes which includes subsidizing school lunches.
In other words, the funding that the USDA is providing for school lunches is arguably state funding which the corrupt feds stole from the states in the form of unconstitutional federal taxes, such funding undoubtedly regarded by corrupt, incumbent federal lawmakers as a way to win votes.
More specifically, one of the reasons that the Founding States established the Senate was so that senators could protect their states by killing unconstitutional House appropriations bills, bills which not only steal 10th Amendment-protected state powers, but which also steal state revenues associated with those powers.
But a major problem is that the corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification Senate is not doing its job to kill such bills, presumably passing such bills to try to win votes as previously mentioned.
The ill-conceived 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and corrupt senators who hurt their states by helping to pass unconstitutional House appropriations bills along with it.
Remember in November ’16!
and those people that are now on the payroll and the families that partake of the ‘free’ lunch program will predominately vote for democrats. and the power continues unabated.
Easy solution for schools in these situations is to simply SHUT DOWN their school lunch services until the government agrees to rescind their punishment.
Just be sure that you’re communicating exactly WHY you’re shutting down.
...and DON’T FRET IT...the kids WILL NOT starve. They didn’t starve before schools provided daycare, they won’t starve after. Believe it or not, most PARENTS are willing to feed their kids, if given a chance.
All because Michelle is a lard-ass.
“Do as I say, not as I do.”
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