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I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

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Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#211

Post by rufus_foreman »

candiddevmike wrote: post #7
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #5

It's astonishing this is a thing. I'm thankful to live in Massachusetts where all kids can get lunch for free with no questions asked. Where I live, kids can get breakfast too, however I've heard that isn't universal in the state. The article points out another issue that is so widespread. Often times, being right above or below a cut off line can make a huge difference and it's kids just above the cut off line here…

During COVID, school lunch was free, and most school served free bag lunches over the summer too. That ended in June 2022. Congress could've kept it going for a pittance, but alas...

This is a problem. If you roll out a program to deal with an extraordinary circumstance, some people think it should go on forever even when the extraordinary circumstance is over. They think it should be a welfare benefit forever.

Next pandemic, no government programs. None. We've seen how it goes.

No benefits next time. People just try to turn it into eternal government welfare programs.

I don't want eternal government welfare programs to deal with temporary problems. Next time, no. No "temporary" government programs.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#212

Post by insane_dreamer »

klodolph wrote: post #28
M3L0NM4N wrote: post #4

Is the overhead in deciding who gets free lunch and who doesn't and then managing the debt really saving more money than just giving all public school kids free lunches with no strings attached?

You can look at stats from NYC: https://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/if-no-student-pays-cost... The report used 2014-2015 numbers, where the cost of lunches for elementary students was $102 million and the participation rate was 57%. It estimates that universal free lunch would cost the city an additional $5.2 million. Part of the costs would be offset by federal reimbursements, so the full estimate is higher than $5…

> it would cost more to make it free for everyone

That's assuming everyone would sign up for the free lunch. We have 2 kids in public schools and pack their lunches even though we could sign them up for free lunch (our state makes it available to all families). We're not alone in that either. (We're also not rich, but we put a high priority on healthy food.)

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#213

Post by bee_rider »

ctkhn wrote: post #204
klodolph wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree… and yet “it’s cheap, it’s the right thing to do, and provides massive benefits” is a different argument from “it pays for itself”.

the problem is that "it pays for itself" is true in the overall societal sense, where a few more kids don't end up in jail or psych wards or something, but there's no way for the school to capture that value when deciding "do we want to feed kids at school?" and so we usually don't do it :/

It is worth keeping in mind that the broader effects might still be positive. But, I think the original poster was just asking about the direct cost of determining who gets the free lunches (that’s why they frame it in terms of the overhead).

While I agree that a full analyst of the social benefit would be better, and I bet it would almost certainly end up being a net positive (and also, the possibility that kids are just not getting fed because of record-keeping screw-ups, missed paperwork, or incomplete programs is just unconscionable), the question the asked about the overhead does have the benefit of being a lot more answerable and direct.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#214

Post by mylesp »

bombcar wrote: post #105
internetter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without reading into lunch specifically, I'd very much be inclined to say yes. The reason is, I spent many hours researching the fair structure of my transit agency. Fares that have, obviously, been in the news for being harming to low income citizens. What I found was that the city spent almost 1 billion on upgrading their collection systems, whereas the yearly revenue from those same systems amounted to 1/10th of t…

One of the "don't say the quiet part out loud" with transit fares (which would NOT apply to school lunches) is that transit fares are a convenient way to remove unwanted transit enjoyers. It is somewhat hard to define "being disruptive on the subway" but it's easy to define "doesn't have a ticket".

A solution that I have seen implemented and discussed is a flat, very low fare. High enough to keep people off public transit that are disrespectful of it, but low enough to allow almost anyone to take it thus increasing ridership. An added bonus is when using a transit card to tap on and off, the statistics of ridership are still readily available for governments to better plan infrastructure.

If you pick a low enough price you even decrease the number of fare dodgers, which means that enforcing is not as important or costly.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#215

Post by gecko6 »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #202
mproud wrote: post #63

I love living in Minnesota. Walz passed the Free Meals for School Kids Program[^1] at my elementary school, no less! about two years ago. I’m happy that other states are finally realizing, gee, this is such a straightforward issue we could actually solve. [^1] https://education.mn.gov/MDE/dse/FNS/SNP/free/

>> gee, this is such a straightforward issue we could actually solve Shifting the cost from the parents who had the kids onto the taxpayers is not solving the problem. It's making people who didn't cause the problem subsidize the people who did cause the problem. That's not solving the problem. It's making sure there will be more problems.

I don't have kids, and will never have kids, but even so I don't see people whose children are being denied food as a problem that the children's parent's caused. I see hungry kids who can't learn because they're distracted by hunger as the problem, and I will gladly pay taxes to see that they don't go hungry.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#216

Post by mylesp »

As an Australian, I find it crazy that getting food from a cafeteria at school is the norm in the US.

In Australia you bring food from home 90% of the time. On special occasions or every now and then you order lunch from the canteen.

It seems almost against American individualism to have a communal meal where everyone is served up the same food and sit indoors in a dining hall. Maybe it is just strange to me but I can't be the only person to think this.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#217

Post by chasd00 »

DISD ( Dallas Independent School District ) has had free lunch for as long as i can remember. Free breakfast too. On school holidays you can still goto school and get a meal. I want to say they do this on weekends too. Granted, MREs from an Army surplus store are better than school lunch but it is free. I don't think my kids have ever eaten a school lunch.

During COVID my wife and I got a EBT (food stamps) card in the mail from the school district with like $2,000 on it for food. It was basically the dollars spent on school lunch for the time the kids were not in school.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#218

Post by bnj »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #202
mproud wrote: post #63

I love living in Minnesota. Walz passed the Free Meals for School Kids Program[^1] at my elementary school, no less! about two years ago. I’m happy that other states are finally realizing, gee, this is such a straightforward issue we could actually solve. [^1] https://education.mn.gov/MDE/dse/FNS/SNP/free/

>> gee, this is such a straightforward issue we could actually solve Shifting the cost from the parents who had the kids onto the taxpayers is not solving the problem. It's making people who didn't cause the problem subsidize the people who did cause the problem. That's not solving the problem. It's making sure there will be more problems.

It’s hard to tell from your comment whether you mean the lunch debt is the problem, or the kids are the problem.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#219

Post by gedy »

mylesp wrote: post #216

As an Australian, I find it crazy that getting food from a cafeteria at school is the norm in the US. In Australia you bring food from home 90% of the time. On special occasions or every now and then you order lunch from the canteen. It seems almost against American individualism to have a communal meal where everyone is served up the same food and sit indoors in a dining hall. Maybe it is just strange to me but I ca…

It seems to have changed in past decades. When I was in school in 70s/80s, everyone brought their lunch. And we weren't in a well-off area or anything.

Re: I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt

#220

Post by crooked-v »

mylesp wrote: post #216

As an Australian, I find it crazy that getting food from a cafeteria at school is the norm in the US. In Australia you bring food from home 90% of the time. On special occasions or every now and then you order lunch from the canteen. It seems almost against American individualism to have a communal meal where everyone is served up the same food and sit indoors in a dining hall. Maybe it is just strange to me but I ca…

School-provided lunches in the US started in the first place in the 1930s and 40s because the sheer number of malnourished teenagers was making military planners nervous. The US is much wealthier now, but there's still about 20 million children who get free lunch for financial reasons.
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