<p>The US Dept of Agriculture is about to roll out a test program in 3 states which will provide free breakfast, lunch and snack to all students provided the individual school (or district - can’t remember) currently has a 40% participation level in the free lunch program.</p>
<p>My understanding is that this addresses two issues. Number one is providing healthy food to all kids. And secondly, to reduce the stigma and embarrassment that many kids feel as a result of the free lunch program. </p>
<p>My friend is a lunch lady at a school where 60% are on the free lunch program. She tells me that check out process for the noon meal is not the “identifier” of who does/does not receive free lunch. Rather it is the breakfast and the afternoon snack which is only provided to certain kids. At her school, if a child does not get to school in time to eat his breakfast then they are instructed to bring it to the classroom. I can see where this would be embarrassing.</p>
<p>Well…MY kids never bought or ate school lunch. Even it was free, they would STILL bring their lunches. </p>
<p>The profit margins for the school lunch programs is VERY tight. I can’t imagine who they will fund this supposed “free for all” lunch program without the %age of students who pay.</p>
<p>At my school there is NO stigma to having “free lunch”. Every kid…including the kids who are full pay…use a debit card arrangement. There is no way for anyone to know how students are paying for lunch. The accounting for these cards happens in the office someplace…and is confidential</p>
<p>Wow, what a disgusting, unhealthy meal that is depicted in the article! I wonder if it is an example of a real school lunch that will be offered in this program.</p>
<p>I can’t ever remember my kids commenting on which kids had subsidized lunch. Never. </p>
<p>In high school they started commenting on which kids took psych meds, since they had to ask permission to leave the room to take them.</p>
<p>I doubt that hungry kids are embarrassed. I also don’t think there is anything wrong with providing food to the rest of the class. If the percentage is that high, the other kids are likely borderline.</p>
<p>Can sort of understand the rationale - our church is a site for free summer lunches through our school district, although for summer lunch there are no income requirements, but recipients have to be 17 (or 18?) and younger. Because eating together is such a communal activity, and because the parents/adults were not permitted to eat due to the regulations, we provided extra food for adults so they could eat too. Even if the food would just go in the trash, the adults were not allowed to have any.</p>
<p>There was an article from a principal at one of these schools with a high number of free meal kids. He said that the food waste was incredible. </p>
<p>He felt that cold cereal and milk, juice, similar should be the breakfast offering…not hot meals that are trashed and expensive to prepare.</p>
<p>Frankly, I’m annoyed that many of the parents still find the money to buy cartons of cigarettes each week, but won’t feed their own kids!!!??!!</p>
<p>Our schools have a high proportion of free lunch eligible kids and their free lunches are on their school ID accounts, so they swipe their IDs to pay for lunch, just like everyone does. There is no way to tell who is getting a free lunch.</p>
<p>Is it going to be required that they <em>have</em> to eat the food? There are schools that have programs like this in place and I’ve heard that some of them require the students to eat the food they serve - the students aren’t allowed to bring food from home. Some students would prefer going hungry over eating food they absolutely detest. Would the students be required to eat only the food served and not bring anything from home? It sounds ridiculous, but it has happened, and this is the federal government we’re talking about here. Absurd rules and regulations are aplenty. </p>
<p>Are the benefits of healthy food (which may not actually be that much more healthy than what the schools already have) and reducing the amount of embarrassment the kids who qualify for free lunch worth the absurd amount of money this is going to cost? Detroit Public Schools has ~84,000 kids and ~15,000 teachers. That’s 99,000 people who would get free lunch, breakfast, and snack - at $5 per day per person, that’s $133 mil (if DPS was paying for it, that’d be 9% of the budget, with no possibility of earning any of that money back) a 270 day school year! It may just be me, but I don’t think over 100 million dollars should be spent trying to alleviate the embarrassment of kids getting free food. I may be somewhat off in my estimation, but going from the fact that they didn’t actually say how much this was going to cost in any article I could find, I’d say the cost is going to be pretty exorbitant. </p>
<p>[$5 per lunch/breakfast/snack figure is from my own school’s cost for said things, DPS figured are from Wikipedia and their website.]</p>
<p>I was always an unusually accepting child, but I don’t remember caring who had subsidized lunch. I remember asking a friend once why he had to get a card punched at lunchtime (the rest of us must pay cash, they get paper cards punched) and he just told me that was how he paid for his lunch. Never thought about it again until I was old enough to know better than to judge anyhow. I’m pretty sure I only asked because I was jealous that he got to use the hole puncher.</p>
<p>If it could be afforded, in theory I like the idea-- though for a lot of my life I refused to eat cafeteria food because I was too picky, and my mom packed me healthy enough lunches herself because otherwise I would have refused to eat the entire day. But I do know there are a lot of kids who don’t eat or don’t eat well and end up disrupting class, and I think this sort of a program would help. I’m surprised that, of all districts, it’s DPS that’s doing this. I can think of about a billion other things they need the money for. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a lot of kids in that district going without, so I guess if it can be paid for I don’t mind them trying it out and seeing if it improves anything. My boyfriend attended a DPS school for a long time and the experience he had there is a really sad story.</p>
<p>I also really kind of doubt that the embarrassment factor is the main reason they’re doing this program even if that’s what the article implies. I think it’s more likely the fact that they know the kids aren’t getting fed properly (and I don’t mean nutritionally speaking, I mean at all) and don’t want to raise holy hell by suggesting the parents are being neglectful.</p>
<p>Way back when I was in public schools we knew who the “poor” kids were because they ate breakfast at school. And believe me, our family was probably one bill payment from me sitting in the lunchroom eating breakfast with the rest of the “poor” kids. I am not opposed to having free meals for all at school, and most particularly in elementary schools. I do like the idea of having a payment card where no one really knows who is getting free or not, as well.</p>
<p>At my school all students buying a meal or any portion of one enter a PIN. Even the kindergartners do it. The free and reduced price lunch kids look just like any other kid going through the line. If a student’s bus is late and breakfast is closed that child is out of luck (according to our food services manager). No snacks are given out for the kids in K who don’t bring one. I supply them for the kids that I know will not have it otherwise. I think it’s cruel to make a child that young go without when everyone else is eating, so I support the idea of provided snacks for free-meal kids.</p>
<p>My big issue is the waste. It is overwhelming to see how much food is thrown away without even being touched. The photo in the article is a pretty typical school lunch for us and we also have pre-packaged cold lunches. The cold lunches come with several containers of different things, such as a small bag of baby carrots, a package of crackers, a container of tuna salad, and a package of cookies. I have never seen a child even open the tuna salad. Lots of cartons of milk are tossed without being opened. Limp, overcooked vegetables are rarely eaten by even the hungriest of kids. </p>
<p>I don’t know the answers. If we give them what they will eat we have to give them junk. If we give them healthier options we waste a lot. I would like to see a lunch line with hot food, prepared on site (NOT FROM PRE-PACKAGED FROZEN), that looks appetizing. I would love for the students to have a choice in what was on their plate so if they are not going to eat green beans we don’t put them on. I would also have a soup/sandwich/salad option, again with student choice instead of slopped on the tray. I would eliminate the sale of Fruit Roll Ups, Little Debbies, etc. as extras that kids could buy.</p>
<p>My first high school had breakfast available to purchase. I’m sure there was some students who had free or reduced lunch, but I never asked anyone. You had to eat in the cafeteria, before class. I don’t think anyone knew who had it because you had to enter a pin into the system.</p>
<p>Last high school everyone could get breakfast regardless if you had free, or reduced lunch. I never took it. In fact students would ask me why I didn’t, or ask me to give them my breakfast. It consisted of dry cereal, milk, crackers, and a small juice box. Students would often save the crackers for later, and sometimes the juice. Most students had free or reduced lunch. They talked about it freely. I didn’t apply for it because last time we didn’t get anything. There was a lot of the breakfast wasted. Teachers would often try to keep the extras so that students had snacks, or lunches. Not everyone could afford the lunch even if it was reduced. One teacher tried to get the school to let them donate it a homeless shelter, and she was told they couldn’t. I forget why, but she was so angry. I want to say she was told the extras couldn’t even go home with her. So as I said it was kept for students to eat whenever, and take with them for sports, or lunches. </p>
<p>I don’t think it should be free to everyone. I could see where there would be a lot of food waste. Some students like myself, don’t eat hot lunch. I only ate at the first high school and that was mainly a bagel. Otherwise I always brought food from home. Also students who get free or reduced lunch often take advantage of the fee waiver for ACT, SAT,AP tests, and college applications. If free lunch was for all, the system would have to change on how they determine what students still gets these waivers. Not everyone submits the documents, myself included, that are required to get those waivers. It could become a bad situation if someone doesn’t submit documents, and then expects to get the additional waivers.</p>
<p>It’s good to hear in some school students on FRL aren’t identifiable, in one of Ds schools however they were. Also it would be rare that anyone else would even consider eating what passed for breakfast. </p>
<p>When I went to school a hot lunch was a treat but that was in a smaller district that served real food. </p>
<p>What passes for a meal is really an abomination & IMO itdoesnt have to be that way.</p>
<p>Our schools have the PIN thing, so no stigma is attached. The schools also do a remarkably good job of serving reasonably healthy food that kids actually like to eat. (A turkey hotdog and carrot sticks in the elementary school, for example, when I last ate there.) IIRC, all food is a la carte at the HS, so there is no waste. And there are no vending machines available during the day. (The vending machines for drinks, HS-only, I think, unlock for afterschool activities. My recollection is that they contain fruit juice and sports drinks, possibly flavored waters, no sodas.)</p>
<p>On the waste issue, kids waste huge amounts of food sent from home, too. When mine took a lunchbox, half of it would come back, spoiled, and have to be thrown out. Even though I was trying really hard to give him things he supposedly liked.</p>
<p>Despite the above, I don’t think that blanket free lunch is a good idea when education budgets are being cut.</p>
<p>Maybe this is the way to go for elementary kids. Offer them only healthy options that they can pick and choose from, (like 3 packets of carrots and a milk if they don’t like the burrito), so half of it doesn’t end up in the trash.</p>
<p>Sounds like a good idea to me, Bay. As long as all of the options are reasonably helathy, I don’t think a kid needs to have complete balance at every lunch. </p>
<p>BTW, I read the article about LA lunches, and I find it hard to believe that kids are really going to eat a lot of those new things, although they sound good to me.</p>
<p>I’d much rather see a lower student-teacher ratio and an income requirement for free breakfasts and lunches. If there’s plenty of money for both in the Detroit school system, great, but if school budgets are being cut and more money is being spent to feed kids who don’t need it, that’s counter-productive.</p>
<p>Last year my d2 was a 1st grade teacher in an impoverished school district. Something like 97 percent of the kids qualified for a free lunch, but fewer qualified for a free breakfast. Someone obtained a grant to provide a free breakfast for all students, but logistics meant that there was no longer enough time in the AM to get everyone fed in the cafeteria. So it was decided to have the kids eat breakfast in the classrooms, under the supervision of … the teachers! Like they don’t have enough to do - why not add supervising a meal for 28 7 year-olds? </p>
<p>To make matters worse, the breakfasts were not good nutrition. Bananas (which arrived pre-opened and hot?) - fine. Low-fat milk - fine, but 14 chocolate and 14 not? That created an interesting challenge, of which 1st grade teachers already have too many. Then - individual boxes of golden graham cereal (lots of processed sugar). AND a little bag of mini graham crackers. Enough carbs to put anyone to sleep.</p>