Minnesota students: Don't forget your lunch money

[question everything]

Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune

Some Minnesota children go to school hungry and leave even hungrier.

A majority of public school districts in this state deny hot lunch — or any lunch at all in some cases — to children who can’t pay for them. Some schools take the meals from students in the lunch line and dump them in the trash when the computer shows a deficit in their lunch accounts.

(snip)

About 62,000 low-income children and teens take part in Minnesota’s reduced-price lunch program. That should mean that for 40 cents, they get a hot, nutritious lunch, with the remainder of the cost covered by public funds. But if students fail to come up with even 40 cents, some schools respond by denying or downgrading students’ lunches, as Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid discovered when it surveyed 309 public school districts. Some school districts send students home with a verbal warning for their parents or a hand stamp visible to all that says “LUNCH” or “MONEY.” Others hand children a bread-and-butter sandwich and carton of milk in lieu of a hot lunch.

In a survey released Monday, 46 Minnesota school districts told Legal Aid that they immediately or eventually refuse to feed students who have insufficient funds in their lunch accounts. More than half the districts in the state — 166 of them — provide an alternative meal, typically a cold cheese sandwich, once the money runs out. Another 96 school districts, including the Minneapolis public schools, provide a hot lunch regardless of a child’s ability to pay.


Read more: http://www.startribune.com/local/244819041.html

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After this story was published, it was reported that Gov. Mark Dayton is putting his full political weight behind a new proposal that would pay for hot lunches for students who can not pay.

“No child in Minnesota should be denied a healthy lunch,” said Dayton, who is at Mayo Clinic recuperating from hip surgery. “We cannot expect our students to succeed on an empty stomach. I look forward to working with the legislature to make this issue a priority in the upcoming legislative session.”

(snip)

The state is likely to have a surplus of close to $1 billion for the rest of the budget cycle and legislators are expected to figure out what to do with the money when they convene later this month.

The $3.5 million needed to pay for the hot lunches would make up a tiny sliver of any larger budget agreement. Deputy Senate Majority Jeff Hayden, DFL-Minneapolis, is a sponsor of the proposal in the Legislature.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/244935561.html

[Scuba]

1. They're saving up for a new football stadium in which to lose.

[LuckyLib]

4. Yes they are -- all $900 million plus for the Vikings stadium, both the state and Minneapolis

subsidizing the wealthy racketeering owners. But let's quibble over food money for children. It's enough to make you sick!

[warrant46]

7. Criminals

Zygmunt "Zygi" Wilf (born April 22, 1950) is the principal owner of the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League.

Wilf and five partners purchased the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League from Red McCombs in 2005 for a reported US$600 million. Forbes estimates the 2012 value of the franchise at US$975 million, or 22nd of the 32 NFL teams.

On August 6, 2013, Wilf, along with his brother and cousin, were found liable by a New Jersey court for breaking civil state racketeering laws and keeping separate accounting books to fleece former business partners of shared revenue. The presiding judge noted that Wilf had used organized crime like tactics to commit fraud against his business partners.

For several years the Vikings and Wilf have stated that their current home, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome is inadequate and have lobbied for a new stadium. In May 2012, the Minnesota Vikings moved closer to getting a new $975 million stadium after the state Senate approved a plan that relies heavily on public financing.

---NOTE and then they throw the hot meals of poor children in the trash---Progressive ?

[LittleGirl]

2. Feed the children

Damn it, it makes me furious that we're talking about 40 cents that we citizens can't come up with?
It's school.
Provide the meal.
We do it for corporations. (Write offs)

Feed the children!
Demand it.
We should not even be talking about this.

40 cents people.

Feed the Children.

[AngryAmish]

6. Here I dissent

If one has a child the absolute minimum one must do is feed your child. And if one has a child it will happen.

[LittleGirl]

15. if you pay taxes to provide education

the mid-day meal should be included in that right?

Just feed the children!

[sybylla]

20. Yes, and if accounting errors are made, so what. They go without lunch.

Oh, and the prize for failure to pay that $.40 is public shaming with a stamp on their hands and have their lunch tossed in the garbage in front of them uneaten.

WTF? So the school paid for the food anyway. Why throw it away uneaten? These are children, for fuck's sake. They should be punished because their parents are incompetents? Or because the school screwed up the account (which happened to my children often enough that we stopped hot lunch all together)?

Do you hear yourself?

[LanternWaste]

23. Hence the 15 million children living in food insecure households in the US...?

"And if one has a child it will happen..."

Hence the 15 million children living in food insecure households in the US...?

(Source: Singh's 'Household Food Security in the United States in 2012')

[Skittles]

3. can I buy some school lunches instead of drones?

THANK YOU

[Laurian]

5. This makes me sick...really physically ill.

Utah, now Minnesota. I think this is a widespread policy and it's abhorrent. I cannot imagine being in the presence of a hungry child and not doing anything about it. That schools have policies that allow (or even contribute to) child hunger is outrageous.

[jwirr]

24. I agree but I know MN and my guess is that it is our southern rethug counties that were allowing

this practice. I cannot imagine our school district doing this. I am glad Governor Dayton acted and I am sure that bill will pass.

I am ashamed to be in the second state to be doing this.

[marble falls]

8. Pretty hard to get lower than refusing to feed children that are on the program due to low incomes.

[idendoit]

9. I like Keith Ellison's approach to this when asked.

If we paid their parents a living wage, this would not be an issue.

[Brigid]

10. What do people in civilized countries think . . .

When they see stories like this?

[freshwest]

11. Leaving them hungry is another way to reduce test scores and have them fail. n/t

[yuiyoshida]

12. I am sure there are some

Republicans who would rather see the "little rats" starve because they are a burden on the state and society. These are the kind of people, who do not belong in any kind of office at all. You know for a fact if it was a Tea bagger's kid who went without lunch they would surely raise holy hell over it.

[azurnoir]

14. This is in part the doing of the repukes

In 2002 shortly before the take over of Tim Pawlenty as Governor Mn was rated 2nd in the country in child welfare by the end of his first term that had dropped to 27th in the country something that the pukes considered an accomplishment

[alp227]

13. Or how about Minnesota do what Boston, MA did:

Free lunch for ALL students regardless of family income, end of story.

[bigworld]

17. I agree with Alp227

that the lunch should be included for everyone. There will always be those parents who would unjustly take advantage of getting a free meal (and kids who pocket the 40c).

Besides, how much money would they save on bookkeeping and fancy POS systems?

[ancianita]

19. The best policy, because it allows for no bad judgment at local levels. Free lunch should come with

free public school.

It's a good draw for middle class parents' keeping their kids in public schools, too.

[FSogol]

21. I agree, but until that happens, the PTA needs to step up and set up a fund

to cover daily shortfalls. They do at my local elementary school.

[ancianita]

22. Upline school officials will never systematize improvement for kids until locals politically threate

n them with their jobs. They will rationalize unethical treatment of kids while local parents enable them to.

Of course parents should fill in and make sure kids are fed hot meals, but ANY way that parents present a stopgap solution, that solution postpones the policy solution and the learning climate of schools, anyway.

[ancianita]

16. "The deciders" of how children are fed are THE PRINCIPALS. Yet another time the public and media

overlook them.

PRINCIPALS are the prioritizers and spenders of their schools' budgets. Every last principal in the USA. THEY are the liaison between district administers and the local community, but that does NOT mean that principals play at being helpless middlemen in "policy" making. Adhering only to the letter of the law in feeding children is bad policy.

The greatest fight parents of all states need to wage is with PRINCIPALS. PRINCIPALS are paid well to be
1) legally liable to secure the safety and welfare of all children in their charge, and
2) instructional leaders of their schools.

Don't let principals dodge this issue, people. They make too much money not to earn it.

[ancianita]

18. PRINCIPALS know that food quality is connected to learning climate. PRINCIPALS ARE THE CENTER

AND HEART OF THIS PROBLEM. Every district of both privatized and public schools should have a zero tolerance policy that includes immediate dismissal of local principals who allow food service personnel to deny nutritious, hot food to children. I can't emphasize enough how principals are accountable for prioritizing their spending toward the children in their charge.

Principals who allow food service people to throw out trays of food are particularly evil or stupid and, at best, guilty of fiscal malfeasance. If food service can afford to throw food away, principals know that they can afford to give it to the kids.

A principal MUSTMUSTMUST TRAIN the grownups who work with kids to see all kids as OUR kids -- dependent, innocent deservers of all the resources we can give them -- and not as "somebody else's" kids, to teach carelessness, spite or 'survival of the fittest' jungle ethics to.

Bottom line: good food leads to good learning. That principals duck this foundational leadership stance makes them unworthy of their positions.

[malthaussen]

25. The illogic of this drives me fruit-loops.

Throwing away perfectly good food, why? That makes it quite obvious that this cannot be a money issue, yes? So what else can we conclude but that it is about something else.

Namely: shame and humiliation.

-- Mal

[Common Sense Party]

26. Wait, I thought this only happened in beet-red Utah.

[Z-RO]

27. There is no excuse for denying children food. What is WRONG with these people?

[hunter]

28. Those kids ought to be working in the mills and coal mines!

How are they ever going to learn AMERICAN VALUES if they get FREE LUNCHES?!!!

ANSWER ME THAT!




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor

[Z-RO]

29. I know that picture well. You can't be in the GOP unless you prove that you approve of slavery.

Slavery is quite alive and well today.