Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

What families lost when the US lost universal free school meals
The hill ^ | 12/10/2022 | LUIS GUARDIA AND ANNA KING

Posted on 12/10/2022 1:43:05 PM PST by ChicagoConservative27

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, federal policymakers acted quickly and decisively to make school meals available to all children at no charge.

This policy remained in effect for two and a half years. It was a game-changer.

Across the country, school nutrition staff reported numerous benefits in the Food Research & Action Center’s (FRAC) Large School District Report, including removing the stigma from program participation and eliminating school meal debt to the benefit of both families and school districts. The policy also helped address household food insecurity, which rose significantly due to COVID-19 and allowed an additional 10 million students to eat free meals at school each day.

(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: annaking; chat; chatforum; clickbait; covid1984; dnctalkingpoint; dnctalkingpoints; education; fakenews; families; frac; luisguardia; meals; newsforumabuse; notnews; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; presstitutes; school; schoollunch; schoolmeal; smearmachine; tanstaafl; thehill; theshill; universal
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081 next last
To: ChicagoConservative27

“The policy also helped address household food insecurity,”


If you don’t know, school districts really, really want more kids on the free/reduced lunch programs, hounding every family to apply. Reason: they get more Federal funding the more kids are in the program.

Kids from poor families are in almost automatically. Of course they are already on the Food Stamp/SNAP program, so in theory, they should already be getting enough to eat. But we know how that really works. So schools provide a free breakfast and a free lunch—often year round even when schools aren’t in session.

And then there’s the ‘backpack’ program for kids to take home food for the weekends. You can’t expect parents to feed their own kids on the weekends, can you?

Note: I realize that there are kids whose only likely weekend meal is coming from those backpacks and that their parents’ irresponsibility isn’t the kids’ fault. But I’m curmudgeonly enough to think there should be stigma attached to parents who don’t provide for their kids, even when they’re collecting welfare expressly for that purpose.


21 posted on 12/10/2022 2:09:25 PM PST by hanamizu
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ChicagoConservative27; All
As a side note to this thread, please consider the following.

Patriots are reminded that the states have never expressly constitutionally given the feds the specific power to tax and spend for INTRAstate school lunches.

"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.

In other words, so-called CV19 "federal" funding for school lunches should never have left the states in the first place. Such funding can be consider as state revenues that the states could have used for school lunches without the unconstitutionally big federal government's "help."

Trump's red tsunami of patriot voters need to work with MAGA federal and state lawmakers to put a stop to unconstitutional federal taxes, taxes that the very corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification Congress cannot reasonably justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers according to the Gibbons v. Ogden excerpt above.

22 posted on 12/10/2022 2:12:40 PM PST by Amendment10
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ProtectOurFreedom

Roof? you had roofs? We had to sleep leaning against
a windfall...


23 posted on 12/10/2022 2:13:04 PM PST by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: ChicagoConservative27
"What families lost when the US lost universal free school meals"

Government dependence, interference, influence, indoctrination, and control.




For stsrters

24 posted on 12/10/2022 2:14:20 PM PST by knarf (I say things that are true . . . I have no proof, but they're true.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ProtectOurFreedom

ProtectOurFreedom wrote: “Self-reliance. Dignity. Hard work. Thrift. Taking care of your family. You know...all those good old-fashioned American values that made the country great.”

Left off the freedom to choose what’s for lunch instead of the government choosing for you. You want the crickets or the grasshopers?


25 posted on 12/10/2022 2:17:30 PM PST by DugwayDuke (Most pick the expert who says the things they agree with.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: cranked

I didn’t mind the PB&J, but oh, I loathed the Olive Loaf.


26 posted on 12/10/2022 2:19:00 PM PST by rlmorel (Nolnah's Razor: Never attribute to incompetence that which is adequately explained by malice.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: rlmorel

” I loathed the Olive Loaf.”

Lulz.

I remember.
Ironically, hated them then but get a hankering for them at times even today.


27 posted on 12/10/2022 2:20:58 PM PST by cranked
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: ChicagoConservative27
"What families lost when the US lost universal free school meals..."


28 posted on 12/10/2022 2:21:50 PM PST by GaltAdonis
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ChicagoConservative27

It reinforces the Idea that your kids belong to the gov’t, not you.


29 posted on 12/10/2022 2:23:31 PM PST by Paladin2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: cranked

“I used to complain about the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and an apple I got to take to school for lunch everyday”

That’s what I used to make for myself for a decade or so when I went to work.


30 posted on 12/10/2022 2:25:17 PM PST by Paladin2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: pfflier

The milk servings were required, because the program is run by the Department of Agriculture. It was a sop to the dairy farmers. I bet there is a higher percentage of children today with lactose intolerance than when I was a school aged kid, but the dairy requirement is still there.


31 posted on 12/10/2022 2:27:23 PM PST by Paleo Conservative (<P>)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

To: Paleo Conservative

“I remember most people hated the school provided lunches except for tater tots.”

Depends on how hungry you are.

In my elementary school, there were some kids that came from the backwoods from dirt poor families. This was before food stamps. They looked like stick figures they were so skinny.

At our school, if you cleaned your plate at lunch, you could go back for ‘seconds’ and get whatever food was left over. Those kids ate every scrap of food on their plates, lima beans, carrots, didn’t matter they ate everything. I remember to this day one kid swabbing off his plate with a piece of cornbread, stuffing that in his mouth, and running back to the serving line.

I’m pretty sure those lunches were all some of those kids got to eat. We can debate welfare and supporting other peoples kids, but you’d have to be pretty hard-hearted to want to cut off school lunches for kids like that.


32 posted on 12/10/2022 2:27:48 PM PST by Roadrunner383
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Chewbarkah

>>I thought poor families received EBT credits specifically to feed their dependent children.

EBT plus SNAP, plus WIC, plus ... plus...plus...


33 posted on 12/10/2022 2:30:03 PM PST by vikingd00d (chown -R us ~you/base)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: Roadrunner383

If the state wants to do it, fine. But fedgov has no part under the Constitution. It’s a grift.


34 posted on 12/10/2022 2:32:56 PM PST by Salvavida (“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: hanamizu
I can tell stories about some school districts that went to “free” breakfast and lunch for their students during COVID — just because the money was being offered to them for it. These are some of the wealthiest school districts in the United States.

Those meal programs were never about feeding students. They were nothing more than a government racket to subsidize farmers and food producers.

35 posted on 12/10/2022 2:34:27 PM PST by Alberta's Child ("It's midnight in Manhattan. This is no time to get cute; it's a mad dog's promenade.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: Paleo Conservative

Most of those lunch trays went from the line to the garbage cans.

Don’t understand why today’s kids can’t be given real food like we had. Real pieces of chicken. Real fruit. The smell of homemade yeast rolls and peanut butter cookies wafting through the hallways during English class before the lunch bell. You know, a cheaper but still yummy version of Sidwell school lunches.


36 posted on 12/10/2022 2:34:47 PM PST by bgill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Roadrunner383

I didn’t say I wanted to cut off school lunches, I just don’t see why everyone’s lunch should be free. The article is about universal free lunches.

I don’t think there were any kids who were starving in my schools, but there were lots who were seriously overweight. In high school lots of students went off campus even though it wasn’t technically allowed.


37 posted on 12/10/2022 2:36:46 PM PST by Paleo Conservative (<P>)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: tet68

Oh, we used to dream of having a windfall...


38 posted on 12/10/2022 2:38:16 PM PST by HartleyMBaldwin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

Because po’ people can afford cigarettes’ and liquor- and Escalades, but not a PB&J and a banana


39 posted on 12/10/2022 2:39:32 PM PST by dsrtsage ( Complexity is just simple lacking imagination)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: DugwayDuke

“Lunch”?? You’re out of date. At lots of schools, it is now Breakfast, Lunch AND Dinner.


40 posted on 12/10/2022 2:53:59 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (If you're not part of the solution, you're just scumming up the bottom of the beaker!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson