RE: Lunch Programs are racist? Let's look closer shall we?
Oh boy, looking to open a can of worms here aren't you? I am not going to take the time to read through the other comments, but I am curious if anyone else actually commented that works in a public school system. I think a lot of states are dealing with similar issues whether it is related to race or not. Here are the things I can tell you having first hand experience with this subject (whether you asked or not :) ). So in Michigan School districts have three or four different budgets. There is the general fund that is like the main budget for the district and then athletics have their own sometimes and food services have their own. A short time ago they passed a law that states unpaid balances in the food services line will be taken from the general fund. With declining enrollment and the government robbing our budgets for pork projects, this is a huge deal. The issue is many of these students would qualify for free or reduced lunch but their parents are too proud to fill out the paper work. The districts are put in a tough position because they genuinely don't want to punish the kids for something that the parents aren't doing, but the money has to come from somewhere and continuing to hemorrhage money because people won't pay is not being very responsible with the tax dollars that have been entrusted to them. We actually started writing grants to get funds specifically for those deficits. We will tell a family look you owe $100 for your kids balance. If you pay $50 we will cover the other $50. It gets hard when you have families that literally owe thousands of dollars. People ask (how can you let it get that bad) but again, what are we supposed to do, not feed the kid? Only give them the basic lunch or a cold sandwich? Then you will accuse us of shaming them... It's kind of a no win and once again public schools become the "bad guy". Sorry for the long comment :)
I like long comments. My problem with the articles and the people who were writing them was that they tried to make it about racism when there was no evidence of any of that... they just assumed (or perhaps just lied about) it because that gets people all worked up.
I don't think that any school kid should not get fed but if a situation arises where a family is not paying for the lunches claiming they don't have money, but somehow manages to have money for all the elective fun stuff, is there not at least a chance that there is some sort of intentional abuse that is going on?
It reminds me of a friend that owed me a couple of thousand dollars, and for years didn't pay me back.. always claiming that he had no money but he didn't realize i was FB friends with his wife and I actually saw the posts and pics of the elaborate vacations they were going on.
For me the main thing that really caught my eye was the media being blatantly dishonest (big surprise) and people who don't even read the articles just take the headline and run with it.
Yeah, like I said, it is really hard. Many of those people do get government assistance which they spend on frivolous things. Like I said though, if they would just fill out the papers their kid could get free lunch every day. The problem is they have to list the income of everyone living in the house, so that live in girlfriend/boyfriend, their kids grandparents and the seven other people living in the house need to be recorded to. We actually have a mass calling system for things like snow days and stuff like that. They wanted me to set it up to start calling parents when they have a lunch balance and I dug my heels in and said no. I told them if you want to guarantee the parent never answers another call from the school again, go ahead and do it, but I don't want to facilitate that.