No. Not even close to OK. There are examples of light in the darkness, such as Tim Walz (Kamala Harris’ running mate) who as the governor of Minnesota enacted a law to make school lunches free for all. Kids don’t get to decide who they are born to, and hungry kids don’t learn nearly as well as fed kids. Educated kids help our future, so it’s an extremely high ROI.
Americans getting pissed off at Europeans constantly making fun of them… And yet I’m still learning more ridiculous bullshit about that country.
Jesus christ, what a sad joke.
We get pissed off because we don’t have socialized medicine for those burns.
From Texas. When I was in elementary school circa 2000, we had a running balance that our parents could contribute to via written checks.
My parents were going through a divorce back then, and in the pinging back and forth between my parents houses, it always gave me so much anxiety buying lunch at school. You wouldn’t know if your account could cover what you picked up in the lunch line until you got to the cashier at the end. AND if it couldn’t, they would literally take all of the food you put on your tray and give you a PB&J sandwich.
Having elementary school kids keep up with their balances was tough, and even when I did remember, if I were with my dad, he would refuse to give lunch money to my sister and me because “that’s what child support is for.”
It just sucked all around and made me feel like the smallest human on earth. And I know that this experience here was not unique to me.
Sounds like a real class act. I bet he still doesn’t know why he couldn’t make his marriage work.
Wait wait wait, waaaaaaait a fucking minute, this is done by the school itself, as in the bloody adults running the goddamn thing?
Holy hell
It’s disgusting. When my son was very young, my wife and I struggled to make ends meet, and got behind on his school lunch payments (I still can’t believe that’s even a thing). The lunch lady at his school would lecture him about how much we owed, and how he shouldn’t get to eat for free just because we were lazy or whatever. He’d come home thinking he was in trouble. America hates poor people.
And it’s entirely preventable. We can afford to feed every single student every single day. It doesn’t have to be a brown bag, sad little whitebread and cheese slice sandwich. It can be the same food everyone else eats. In fact, we spend more administering a for-profit food service payment system than we spend on the food. It would be cheaper to just give it away to everyone.
We know this because we did it during COVID. All of the schools closed, and the for-profit food providers were going to lose a lot of money. Sysco and Aramark and US Foods and Sodexo are all big donors to both parties, so we had to bail them out by buying the food. There wasn’t a debate in congress, there wasn’t any tax increase or funding shortfall. The money was just there because they wanted it.
Schools had more food than they knew what to do with. Food banks and public pantries were fully stocked, and school districts were begging parents to come take home some breakfasts and lunches.
It could really just be like that. No registers, no accounting, no shaming poor kids, no threatening demand letters, no lunch cards, no websites. Just feed children, because hungry children don’t learn.
I’m going to be exceedingly gracious and assume that the one person who downvoted your comment (as of the time I’m typing this) accidentally hit the wrong button and didn’t realize it.
I have definitely done that. But I also think I might have a stalker who follows me around and downvotes comments. Especially when I post something stupid, they all come out of the woodwork.
But yes, I agree, I wouldn’t expect “feed children” to be a contentious suggestion.
But how are you going to maintain an exploitable underclass, if you actually help poor people? Bet you didn’t think of that, huh? Checkmate leftists!
It’s OK, we’re dealing with this by repealing our child labor laws, so kids can work at the meat processing plant instead of some immigrant. Two birds, one stone.
Brought to you by luxury lectern spender (at taxpayer’s expense!) and Weird 34 sycophant Gov. Sarah Sanders of Arkansas.
In California, school lunch is paid by the state. It’s awesome and solves this problem. All the kids get the same lunch for free. Some kids still bring their lunch, but it’s rare.
In foster care we were part of the free lunch program. The first week in my first high school the lunch lady made it a point to call us all up first so EVERYONE knew who the ‘poors’ were. This was in one of the top 5 most expensive zipcodes in the U.S.
For the next four years I ate knowledge in the library for lunch.
Yeah, but what I’m saying is that’s not a thing anymore in California, they just have free lunch for all the kids, and you don’t need to be “a poor” to get it
Yes and that’s wonderful and everywhere should implement it.
But they won’t.
Because people are fundamentally assholes. Just California has a lower quotient due to higher education (though hollywood does skew that a bunch too)
My kids’ school did this a while back and even though I didn’t have any issues buying their lunches not having to manage their account was nice. And since they also got breakfast it was one less thing I had to do before getting them on the bus.
Yeah, they technically offer breakfast for our kids too, but I’d have to get them ready and to school like 30 minutes early. I don’t do mornings like that.
As a Canadian, I’m like:
You guys are getting food?
(School cafeterias with food service beyond selling terrible premade sandwiches for people who forgot their lunch are rare below college level and AFAIK what few exist all operate like a fast-food restaurant, where everyone pays for their meal then and there.)
In Russia, certain groups of kids (children of low-income parents, of families with 3+ kids, orphans) receive a special ticket, one per day, allowing them to have a school lunch for free.
Sometimes they share unused ones (tickets don’t have names on them), which practically guarantees there’s a bunch of kids on their side - everyone wants free lunch.
And generally it was more of a thing to flash, not something to be shamed for.
Ffs America. You can just provide a service, not everything has to turn a profit.
Hol’ up, that sounds like communism.
See what you’ve done there is confuse a system of governance with compassion and humanity.
“Compassion” and “humanity”. What’s that? More communism?
It’s giving a damn about people and their loved one’s well being and standard of living, rather than seeing them as unworthy burdens on society.
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
…and I’ll mine their labour for profit before casting them back into their slums.
(my posts were being ironic, sorry if you thought i was being sincere)
It’s cool, I knew. I’m from a nation that both recognises and appreciates sarcasm. And basic human rights.
Does it look like we’re ok?
There are some states that feed kids as a matter of routine state budgeting. Those kids get a lunch paid for by taxpayers. A damn fine investment of tax dollars, if you ask me.
Schools provide lunch to ANYONE who shows up needing lunch in my county.
Year round.
Adults can come, they can bring children not old enough to go to school and they can come alone.
They don’t sit in the cafeteria with the kids during the school year BUT they can pick up a free lunch from the kitchen.
Turns out feeding people costs less than hungry people (which is how they keep justifying it to the people who want to take it away) AND it’s the right thing to do.
If people think schools feeding kids is a waste of tax dollars, imagine how much of a waste it is to try to teach hungry children.
Tim Walz is governor of one of these states.
I agree feeding children is an unequivocally great use of tax dollars.
My uncle: “AIN’T NO BROWN KID EVER GONNA EAT ON MY DIME DODGAMMIT!”
He and all his friends are voting, you should too.
america are you ok?
Why do people keep asking if we’re okay? No, we are clearly not completely fine. We’re neck-deep in an information war and who will be the ultimate victor is very much undecided.
Frankly, we probably would’ve activated NATO’s Article 5 provision by now, except what good would it do when all of our allies are already under the same sort of attack?
Seriously though, people do not call for civil war in countries that are doing completely fine. That is not a sign of robust civic health.
I pay thousands per year in school taxes and the vast majority goes to school administrators making 6 figures. We can’t just toss more money at schools to fix this - we need legislation stating how the money is used. The money needs to go to the kids and teachers instead of clueless rich people.
Vote in your local elections, join the PTA, tell your friends how fucked it is and ask them to vote. You can’t legislate yourself out of this as school boards regularly mismanage funds for decades.
Dude, read the room. We are in the era of the oligarch.
MOST money will go to the clueless rich who do not need it and we will continue to slide into french revolution levels of wealth gap.
Red states are not okay, because all they have left in their value system is cruelty toward people they see as not “pulling their weight,” as if we still live in some resource-scarce era of yore where if you don’t work, you don’t eat (and even if you do work, eating is not guaranteed, better work harder!).
Blue states are increasingly providing lunches, and sometimes even breakfast, for all students free of charge. It used to be income-based (you’d get free or half-priced lunch based on your family’s income), but even that system is getting ditched because of the associated stigma and the problem of some needy students falling between the cracks.
I taught last year in a district near Dallas, TX where 70% of students were on a free or reduced lunch plan. This year, I am teaching in a district near Portland, OR where breakfast and lunch is free for every student, as it should be.
Minnesota and governor Tim Walz for the win.
