DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... DeVos Questions If Schools Should Provide Free lunch

Don't know what to even say about this...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/devos-questions-schools-free-lunch-094819537.html

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made a seemingly innocuous joke Thursday about no one getting a free lunch. But the comment came as DeVos, a staunch opponent of public schools, is taking over the nation's free lunch program that provides nutrition to low-income students and is under attack from Republicans, raising questions about whether the administration of President Donald Trump will protect food aid programs for children, NPR reported.

During her opening remarks at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference in the outskirts of Washington, Devos jokingly said she is the "first person to tell Bernie Sanders to his face, there's no such thing as a free lunch." The debate over free lunch, however, is no joke. Last year, Republicans pushed to introduce a bill that could have stopped thousands of schools from offering free lunch to all public school students.


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Republicans were unsuccessful in passing the Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016 (H.R. 5003) bill that aimed to reform an Obama-era program called Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). Republicans who pushed for the bill argued that the CEP is a waste of taxpayers’ money as it subsidizes the meals of kids who can afford to pay for them. In particular, the bill aimed to reform the minimum eligibility criteria for receiving free lunch, according to the Washington Post.

Under the program, schools or school districts where 40 percent of the students meet the requirement for a free lunch can also provide meals to all students for free. In turn, schools are reimbursed based on the percentage of low-income students. Republicans argued for hiking the 40 percent eligibility criteria to 60 percent.

But Democrats argue providing free lunch to all student reduces the stigma attached to getting free meals at school. “Students are free to eat without being categorized and stigmatized, and this has created a wonderful climate of equality and cooperation,” Pruitt Jill Pruitt, the eighth-grade counselor at Coffee Middle School in south central Georgia, told the Atlantic.

Betti J. Wiggins, executive director of Detroit Public School's office of school nutrition, said students don't like to admit they come from poor backgrounds. “Many students whose household incomes say they are full-pay may in reality be the household where our students are the most food insecure,” he said.

In most states, students that come from a family of four earning $44,955 or less qualify for reduced-price meals and student with families earning $31,590 or less get free meals. Roughly 31 million American school children qualify for free lunch.

I have relatives who work in public schools and the one thing they go on and on about is the breakfast/lunch programs. Kids who get fed vs the kids who need it but don't get fed. The absolute waste.

It needs to be addressed.

for a good portion of some kids in the inner city especially, those 2 meals are the only ones they get.

that includes poor rural areas as well. those kids get their meals from school.

Yes that is also in the equation.

That is often a parenting problem tho.

it still affects the kids. it's not their fault.

taking away free lunches for these kids in poverty is gonna hurt them more than anybody else.

of course, it won't hurt the woman in charge, who has not only never gone to public school, but doesn't have her own kids in public school, and has been a very vocal opponent of public schools.

of course her kids won't suffer, but screw everybody else, right?

as someone who teaches at public school I'm 100% in support of giving free/reduced breakfast/lunch. HOWEVER, it needs to be regulated so there isn't any waste. I mean, kids will take their free stuff and literally throw 90% in the trash.

i agree with this.

Then take the food stamps and public assistance away from the parents. If they aren't using what the government is giving them to feed their freaking kids as a first priority then somebody needs to shove something up their arse.

you do realize that if you make just enough, you don't get that assistance, right?

not everything in life is as clear cut as you make it to be.

must be nice to look down at the peasants from the suburbs.

I think we should just open soup kitchens back up and do away with the SNAP program all together.

While the cost of food has gone up greatly, SNAP benefits have been reduced. They've been cut and if you think they actually receive enough in benefits to feed their kids a healthy diet, you would be mistaken.

That is what I was talking about.

ok, i didn't quite understand what you meant.

but yea i agree. gotta watch the waste, but these kids still need to be fed.

Once the money is spent on beer and cable, there is nothing left to feed the kids.

I don't know exactly how you took the article, but here's my take: It started off with a joke Devos made - thereby laying the ground work for the rest of the article.

Ok.

I think what republicans tried to do in 2016 was over ride the Community Eligibility Provision, where in if a school had 40% or more of its students qualify for free lunches, the school could offer free lunches to every student in that school.

I would agree with that. If a kid can't afford lunch, according to the income standards in place, by all means, feed them.

But if a kid comes from a well off family but attends a school where 40% or more of the students get free lunches, why should that kid (parents) get food for free?





And on another note: It's been a while since I ate with my daughter at school - like, maybe 8 years.....but boy - the wasted food. I was very surprised at how much just got tossed in the trash.

Yes and I've railed against that model for public assistance for a long time.. there should never be a gap where it benefits you to stay on assistance rather than trying to improve yourself.. but we have a system that works just like that... it provides a disincentive to work because at some point, you lose the benefits without the income to fully replace them.. and that system that creates that gap was designed and implemented by democrats.. and y'all wonder why I say, they want you to be poor, they NEED you to be poor.


I don't look down on anybody that is trying to better themselves.. I apologize if it came across that way. I'm having a crappy day and snapping at everybody.. I should probably shut my office door for the rest of the day before I say something that will get me fired. Again, I apologize.

you good man, and hope the day goes better. we've all had multiple days like that.

i agree the system needs to be redesigned because people trying to crawl out, there's a gap that becomes to the crosswords for a lot of people.

but regardless, policies like this affects the parents less and the kids way more. at some point, the welfare of the kids in public schools has to take priority over saving a buck.

hell, in most cases, you can do both. but these extreme pendulum swings both ways suck.

If you get fired you can spend more time here.

I don't even care what it costs. Kids in school should NEVER go hungry. PERIOD. It's a proven fact that hungry kids don't learn well. It's not even debatable.

When it comes to foodstamps and welfare I don't always agree because you never know if the kids benefit from it BUT school breakfast and lunch ALWAYS 100% of the time(barring bullies) benefit the poor kid. Sometimes that is all the food they will even get.

If Devos or Trump even tries to take away food from the kids it's time to raise absolute hell over it.

BTW I'm fine with ALL kids being allowed to have a free lunch regardless of family income. I just think it's insanely important to make sure those kids get fed.

SAD pathetic little drone.

Some things are worth paying for, even if the system that provides them isn't perfect.

If DeVos can cut the waste there probably would be enough to feed all the kids.

Trump is like the Pilot on the airplane you are riding in.
Only a fool roots against the success of the pilot.

The free lunch program should be adjusted at the state, or even local level.

A family of 4, living in California or NY, would probably have a hard time getting by on $40k/yr. In Youngstown, as an example, $43K is the median household annual income. (this is Youngstown/Warren/Boardman areas) The cost of living in very low in this area, compared to many other places in our country.

Should a family with average income qualify for the free lunch program? I don't think so. On the other hand, in a state with much higher income/COL, family income limits should be adjusted to help those in need, even if they have higher incomes than in other parts of the country.

I think that the program should be block granted to the States, or maybe even to local school districts. They have to report the students qualification for the program anyway, so just send the school district a block grant, to be used for nutritional purposes. Let the states, or local districts, set the rules for income eligibility, based on their local income averages.

Commercial pilots are trained, tested, and qualified.

Trump is a Fascist. I have nothing for him but disdain.

I do not approve of the administration's actions, tactics, philosophy, plans, propaganda, rationale or anything else that they represent.

I have lost patience for those that would provide cover for any of these things, promote these things, accept these things, and or participate in anyway in providing even the most insignificant support.

This man has to go and I will be dedicating my political support to ridding the country of this administration and more specifically Donald Trump and Steve Bannon in any way I can. These are bad actors.

I respect the office, but this man is not presidential in anyway and does not deserve the respect of the office he holds. Kasich would have been a decent President, but his airplane quote does not apply to me.

If they allowed pilots with Trumps lack of experience pilot aircrafts, the death toll would rise to never before seen rates. God help anyone who would board an aircraft.

Now that was funny.

See we can poke fun at each other without Trump being involved and I enjoy that. But I have to admit, some of the things you have said lately and gone along with have baffled me.

I understand your conservative views but not the mean nastiness. I just can't get behind the way people are being treated, the country is being led, and this crazy ideology.

We are the greatest country on earth and in the history of the world. We did not achieve that by acting this way. SAD.

Like I said, only fools root against their pilot.

I never root against our president. I always hope for the best. But I'm also not going to blindly support everything they do. I'm not going to make excuses for their lies, claim they have experience they do not or agree with policies they have that I disagree with.

I support Trump on a border wall, I'm rooting fro him to bring jobs back as he has claimed he will do. I support him on the Muslim ban. There are certainly things I agree with him on.

But I'm not like a sheep sent to slaughter who blindly follows without asking questions.

This is going to sound pretty socialist on my part.. but my daughter's lunch at school is like $2.. and it is exactly what one would expect a $2 lunch to look like. She doesn't want to pack her lunch.... I can afford it, I would gladly pay $4 a day if they would give her decent food worth eating.. and if that could help offset the cost of a poor kids food, I'm ok with that.

This might derail the whole conversation as well but one of the giant financial drains on our public school systems is sports. I would not be opposed to dumping the school sports model and making it a community run program for a variety of reasons.. First, building all of the fields and stadiums adds millions to the cost of the average high school and quite a bit to the cost of a middle school. Then you throw in the cost of uniforms, paying coaches, paying to travel, paying officials, etc. It's a massive drain of money that is taken directly OUT of education. Unfortunately, if you went to a community league model, it would almost certainly have to be "pay to play" and the screams of discrimination against the poor kids would start.. so get sponsors, get local business involved, do something..

I saw a graph not long ago that a school system figured that out of its budget, 42% of the money went to instruction, 12% went to Administration.. that means that 46% of their entire budget was spent on "support services" and "other"... Now I'm just guessing, but I bet sports makes up a decent size chunk of the "other"..

...I'm not against free lunches in schools, but I don't think that is what DeVos was trying to say. "There is no such thing as a free lunch" is one of those old adages. Here's an article that somewhat explains it:

Link



I think DeVos was referring to Bernie Sanders talking point/platform of making College free. I think she was saying that the individuals taking the courses might not be paying for it, but someone still would be- Most likely taxpayers through increased taxes.

I'm not a big DeVos fan, but I think the quote was taken out of context and twisted to fit an agenda. Perhaps, innocently misunderstood, but it's hard to tell with the media any more.

I enjoy reading posts like this.

I do too.

A socialist calling someone else a minion is quite ironic.

My kids need a school lunch. Go ahead and claim the "poor people on food stamps!" argument, but only one of you on this entire board understands what happens in remote Alaska villages. We need a free school lunch program.



My grad school class in culturally responsive teaching talks about this very idea. I'd be for it.

I am proud to be called a socialist. I think that members of society should all have certain things as part of being in the group.
Food, Housing, basic clothing, doctor visits/healthcare, national security, fire and police protection, roads for public transport of people and goods, and most importantly EDUCATION. These are ALL socialist programs.

If all I wanted was food and shelter I could live in the woods and be done with people. I can live off the land quite well and don't need people at all. So if you want me part of society then there has to be something better than just mere survival to justify my sacrifice of freedom to be involved with people who half the time are happier to see me fail instead of succeed.

Even the Kings of old understood they had to care for the needs of their people to have a successful country. What because we SAY we are free that means we should not care about our fellow citizens right? This is why I don't believe or support in complete capitalism. Pure Capitalism just doesn't work because businesses will just drain society dry and then throw people away when it stops being profitable.

America works because it's a "Republic for which we stand." The mixture of Socialism and Capitalism is what made us so successful. Sadly atm Things are too extreme and out of balance. Hopefully we go back to investing into our communities and people so we can go back to being a great country again. Because just doing what feels nice instead of what is actually good for the country doesn't work. What is good for the country is not always best for the individual.