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Michelle Obama Expands Program That Gives All Students Free Meals
Michelle Obama Expands Program That Gives All Students Free Meals
By Bryce Covert
On Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will announce the expansion of a pilot program that gives all students, regardless of income, free school meals, including breakfast and lunch.
The original program targeted students in 11 states, but as of July 1, it will be expanded to 22,000 schools across the country where 40 percent or more of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, a sign of a high concentration of poverty. The administration says this will reach 9 million children and help them “eat health meals at school, especially breakfast, which can have profound impacts on educational achievement.”
Programs that give all students free meals come with a variety of benefits. It eliminates the stigma children on free or reduced-price meals can experience, particularly when schools throw out their lunches and stamp their hands when their balances run low.
It can also save schools and parents a big headache when it comes to paperwork. Just half of the students who are eligible for free breakfast actually receive it, perhaps due to complications with getting enrolled. And in Boston, where the school district made all students eligible for free meals, there had previously been many families who fell just outside the income limits for the free meal program and are now able to participate.
- more -
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2014/02/25/3329241/michelle-obama-school-meals/
By Bryce Covert
On Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will announce the expansion of a pilot program that gives all students, regardless of income, free school meals, including breakfast and lunch.
The original program targeted students in 11 states, but as of July 1, it will be expanded to 22,000 schools across the country where 40 percent or more of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, a sign of a high concentration of poverty. The administration says this will reach 9 million children and help them “eat health meals at school, especially breakfast, which can have profound impacts on educational achievement.”
Programs that give all students free meals come with a variety of benefits. It eliminates the stigma children on free or reduced-price meals can experience, particularly when schools throw out their lunches and stamp their hands when their balances run low.
It can also save schools and parents a big headache when it comes to paperwork. Just half of the students who are eligible for free breakfast actually receive it, perhaps due to complications with getting enrolled. And in Boston, where the school district made all students eligible for free meals, there had previously been many families who fell just outside the income limits for the free meal program and are now able to participate.
- more -
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2014/02/25/3329241/michelle-obama-school-meals/
39 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Don't let Dick Cheney hear about this...
Thank you Michelle!
fresh~
Read that as: the Obamas are more interested in feeding lazy people who don't want to work using our tax dollars rather than using those tax dollars to protect and defend us 
That is what "they" will say.
One of the sub links
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/06/10/2132331/report-child-hunger-is-concentrated-in-rural-america/
Over one in five American children lack steady access to sufficient food, and over 50 million total Americans are food insecure. Those figures come from Map the Meal Gap, an annual report from the anti-hunger charity Feeding America that tracks food security down to the county level.
Feeding America’s interactive map is based on national data from 2011 and focuses on the rates of food insecurity rather than the raw numbers. The country’s largest cities have the largest raw numbers of food-insecure children, but children in rural communities are most likely to be food insecure.Forty-three percent of America’s counties are rural, but they make up almost two-thirds of counties with high rates of child food insecurity.
Three in ten children in New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington, D.C. face food insecurity, as do a quarter or more of children in Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Nevada, Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi, North Carolina, California, Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Zavala County, Texas has the highest rate of child food insecurity: 46 percent. Click the map to access the interactive graphic on
FeedingAmerica.org:
Feeding America’s interactive map is based on national data from 2011 and focuses on the rates of food insecurity rather than the raw numbers. The country’s largest cities have the largest raw numbers of food-insecure children, but children in rural communities are most likely to be food insecure.Forty-three percent of America’s counties are rural, but they make up almost two-thirds of counties with high rates of child food insecurity.
Three in ten children in New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington, D.C. face food insecurity, as do a quarter or more of children in Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Nevada, Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi, North Carolina, California, Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Zavala County, Texas has the highest rate of child food insecurity: 46 percent. Click the map to access the interactive graphic on
FeedingAmerica.org:
Kick and rec! Thanks ProSense!
Michelle is Awesome!
