Not opposed to the spending aspect of free lunches but more of the life lesson psychological benefit of having the parents providing meals. Even if that means food stamps or SNAP benefits. Provide for your own kids even if you need some help.
I am aware of where budgets come from. Did you read my post clearly? Budgets are set via a variety of state and local laws. I said that I approve of the law, but again - my point is only that @GcDiaz isn't completely unreasonable to say that providing lunches for kids could be a priority in the overall budget even absent a state-wide law making it so. Lunches for needy kids have been provided all over the country for years without statewide laws enforcing it. @Kubla Kahn this actually made me laugh out loud. No party in this transaction gives a single shit about how the school lunch comes into being. The 9 year old kid doesn't care whether his lunch is paid for directly by his parents, or indirectly through taxes. A broke parent isn't going to feel some kind of moral pride or learn a valuable in seeking out SNAP and going to the grocery store to feed their kids vs. participating in a school lunch program. The money comes from the same place. All that does is punish parents who are, for whatever reason, unable to prepare lunches at home, and cut into whatever SNAP benefit budget they already have. There's no life lesson. That's just "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" bullshit. Even if it's just because the kid has a shitbag parent, there's absolutely no reason for the kid to suffer for that. The best possible outcome for everyone is having kids at school receiving good nutrition with the minimum possible friction.
Maybe that's what he implied, but that's not what he said. I asked how it comes into being without a law. That being said, couching it in some budget line item or even some miscellaneous budget item is a really shitty way to handle such a delicate program. We have that in Massachusetts, my daughter takes advantage of at least 3 times a week. But we also passed a specific law to take advantage of the federal program that provides it. Two years ago RvW was dismantled by the Supreme Court, in part because it was never codified into law after multiple opportunities to, even with the occasional filibuster-proof majorities. Programs borne out of budgets are even more vulnerable.
Nah you’re right active engaged parenting means nothing to a developing child and their prospects of being a successful adult. Physically feeding your own children is literally the bare minimum effort expected out of a responsible parent. If you are too much of a “shit bag” as you say then the kids should probably be wards of the state. All of the poor people I know with precarious children situations go on and on about how “they provide for my kids” a point of pride and drive even if they aren’t in the best of places financially. This is an extension of that.
One of the reasons the school lunch laws have come under fire is that is a serious obstacle to the vouchers/school choice programs aimed to gut public ed. If kids who receive public funding for school are required to also receive food, then you can't have Zoom classes, and the facilities would need to be equipped for food service, which most strip mall daycares are not. School funding is the #1 or #2 item on most property tax bills, and if a governor wants to deliver on lower taxes, that's what they are targeting. The other big ticket item is usually law enforcement, and they simply cannot reliable reduce that funding. Half the time, the bill for lawsuits means that budget item can't move, even if they wanted it to. The folks who are trying to gut public ed need to be castrated and crucified, because the closer you look, the uglier it becomes. They are usually republicans under the guise of "parent choice". These programs remove teacher credential requirements (see: FL) to address a "teacher shortage" that the states manufactured by cutting salaries/benefits, weakening unions, or putting absurd politics in the classroom (OK, LA, FL, TX) that are objectionable to anyone who views education as an actual career. The next step is to move the teachers virtual, so hundreds of students can be taught by a "licensed educator" from Mumbai for pennies. Also, they use the vouchers for religious schools, primarily stewarded by the Catholic church, because they already have a network of schools and they need the money to deal with the pedophilia lawsuits. I'll say that again: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH WANTS TO RUN MORE SCHOOLS TO PAY FOR THE PEDOPHILIA CRIMES THEY COMMITTED. It's a cash cow for the Catholic church. They also allow for religious fundamentalists to cook up "schools" that are glorified day cares, ran by victims of the Handmaid's Tale. What once was a home school environment for one family is now an enterprise with a bunch of families allowed and paid by the public to "educate" the next generation of cult members in someone's home or basement with a "curriculum" of laughable material. The only consistent outcome is these "educational" products have is that the kids are generally fucked. Public ed in specific schools/situations (like Baltimore) can be a nightmare, but writ large across a state, they are always better for the kids. Until this bullshit takes hold.
I just cannot think of any important life lesson that was imparted to me during all my years eating free school lunches, that wasn't already covered by my eating breakfast and dinner at home.
Aren’t these programs aimed at kids that are getting meals at home? Some schools have breakfast and lunch programs.
I learned that a vending machine honey bun is not an adequate breakfast after getting up for 5 AM swim practice.
You had vending machines? You had swim practice? Fucking hell my school sucked. And still fed us for free
We had swim practice, but we did not have a pool. We had to bum off the pool of the next town over, which explains why they made us practice at FIVE IN THE FUCKING MORNING. In New England winter. My hair froze daily.
I didn't write off "active, engaged parenting" as superfluous. I'm saying that free school lunches does not affect "active, engaged parenting" one iota, and I think it's literally laughable to suggest that giving free lunches to school kids is going to negatively impact that. If parents want to refuse state programs because they feel it's a point of pride to give their kids lunches, they can still do so. This is truly one of the most inane takes I've ever heard.
Im full of inane takes. Ask me about calling a significant other as “my partner.” I really don’t have strong feelings on any of them.
Yeah but they might prevent your asshole from getting torn open in prison. As for student lunches, at least here, the money to pay for them is basically a drop in the bucket. The program costs MA taxpayers $172M against an annual budget of $58B. We use it because some days I just don't feel like packing the kid a lunch.
That's more like it. You used community pools the same way we used city parks, because we had no yard or playing field whatsoever. Just a big concrete block on west 50th.
Technically it was their high school's pool, not a community pool. Ironically we were the richer town, but they were much bigger, so they could justify having a pool in their high school, and we could not.
You see things like this and you can't help think maybe the Soviets had a point. Do you even need the video, or is it enough to know there's a TV production studio for students to make it themselves? https://youtu.be/sGoJ9mxnmmI?si=vHFKxLZ97gWrp_bj