Posted on 10/19/2021 8:48:27 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed a new state law Thursday that focuses on students' access to school meals, with provisions around free breakfast and lunch as well as unpaid meal debt.
The new law also takes aim at a practice known as "lunch shaming," prohibiting schools from publicly identifying or taking punitive action against students who have unresolved debt for school meals.
"The new law is both timely and critical because it boosts federal nutrition dollars to schools across Massachusetts, and keeps children out of what should be an 'adult only' conversation on school meal debt," said Patricia Baker, a senior policy analyst at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. "But we know that more work needs to be done, at both the state and federal level, to ensure that no child is food insecure."
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at patch.com ...
The practice is public shaming and public humiliation from the people who lecture you about bullying being wrong, how we should stop inequality, and how we should stop singling out disadvantaged kids.
There shouldn’t be any “federal nutrition dollars to schools” in the first place!
Basically, free lunch for all.
Will they be allowed to be shamed and lose their free lunches if their parents wont allow them to get the jab?
From the looks of kids these days, most need to skip a few meals anyway. We have the richest poor people on earth and the fattest starving people on earth.
Hmmm.... I recall brown paper bags, warm bologna sandwiches, mostly brown banana, and on a good day a ding dong or some chips. And if you were ashamed of your lunch, you could try and trade off some items.
I guess I should be grateful that these days I have enough money to pay for the lunches of kids with parents that can’t be bothered to make them a lunch or can’t afford to care for their progeny...
Any school employee throwing away food while a kid goes hungry should be criminally charged. Of course, in my world, a parent sending their kid to school without a lunch would result in some changes to that situation too...
I wish Mastercard and Visa would do this.
When I went to the lunchroom in high school, it was required to pay up front in cash ... I usually couldn’t afford it ...
Thank you very much for your courage in speaking that truth.
The schools are spending more time & effort to feed kids than to actually EDUCATE them with the necessary items they will need to hold a job.
WHEN CRT is more important than reading-—writing (Including Cursive) and Arithmetic, this nation is in real trouble.
I am grateful every day that I went to a ONE ROOM SCHOOL.
So, we have food stamps and welfare and still have to furnish two meals a day for kids? What are the food stamps for?
The ‘lunchroom’ I had in high school consisted of a space with bleachers & ONE cooler that held milk cartons=
8 OZ for 5 cents. We packed our own lunches. A whole loaf of Wonder bread was used every day for PB & J sandwiches for all 4 of us kids. Maybe an apple or a banana.
The parents should be ashamed that they can’t feed their own children.
They should do public service at night and on weekends.
That's is a different topic.
This isn't being done to children who receive free school meals. Their meals are paid for. This is being done to students whose parents didn't add money to their childs' school meal debit card.
Feed your own damn kids, it’s a school, not a restaurant!
More like Gov. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
With the billions wasted every year on EBT, no child in this country should go hungry at school. If they can afford a cell phone........................................
I am convinced that the school lunch program does NOT interface with the EBT food stamps. NO COMMUNICATIONS AT ALL.
A “MOM” with 4 kids gets food stamps for 3 meals a day-—7 days a week-—for herself & the 4 kids
That is 5 times 3=15 times 7 =105 meals in food stamps.
Those kids are getting AT LEAST lunch at school-—4 kids times 5 days a week = 20 meals. If they also/ are getting breakfast, add another 20 meals.
SO-—The taxpayers are paying for as high as 145 meals a WEEK for this “family” of mom & 4 kids.
I am convinced that Mom is getting EBT funds that she is using fraudulently-—and the FED & STATE governments know this & HAVE known this for YEARS.
PROVE ME WRONG
Basically, free lunch for all.
************
And breakfast...you nailed it on the head.
It used to be that title kids got free lunch, then they expanded it to breakfast also.
In effect Title students are being fed two meals a day (breakfast and lunch), despite their parents receiving Aid for Dependent Children and Food Stamps. This despite some perents selling food stamps or using them for other purposes, than feeding their children.
So, if we’re giving the parents food stamps to feed the children, and they are being fed two meals a day at school, why do we have “hungry kids in America”?
Some of these kids would sell their lunches to other non- Title students for less than the cost of the school lunch, and pocket the money for snacks after school, or other purposes. They may have even been forced to give the money to their parents...who knows.
Now if enough of a percentage of students at a school are Title students, the entire schoo is delared to be a Title School, and all students are fed at tax payers expense.
I believe the issue contained in the article is in reference to regular students (non title), who charge meals, and then the parents do not pay. Happens often.....
Hence, no student will pay for breakfast or lunch, under the new legislation in Massachusetts, no matter how well off the parents are financially.
“FREE???”...Sorry the rest of us pay.
Wouldn’t it have been wonderful, when we were children.
Our district is everyone gets free lunch and breakfast, and we are an upper middle class district. The only kids who bring lunch are the ones who don’t like what is on the menu.
EXACTLY! Thank you for straightening out FReepers who just go off without reading the story.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.