School Lunches: Food and Fraud

In 1946 President Harry Truman signed the National School Lunch Act.  Like the road to hell, it was paved with good intentions.  The NSLP is now rift with fraud.   Consider this: the NSLP currently serves 60% of all students in both public and private schools.  We know that two-thirds of all Americans do not live at or below the 130% of the poverty level required for free school lunches. 

For every person who signs up for free and reduced lunch the school district gets extra benefits beyond the subsidy for the food itself.  What is more, no income verification is required for enrollment.  When families enroll their children in school, they have the form for free/reduced lunches pushed across the counter and are simply told to fill it out and return it.  Sometimes they are enticed by the phrase, “This is so your child can get free lunch.”  The result is an environment where everyone (except the tax payer) benefits from lying, duplicity and disrespect for the rule of law. 

I have a solution to this problem which is both simple and surprisingly, affordable. 

Feed them all!

The rich, the poor, the middle income, if you are a student and walk through the door of the school that day you are going to get a meal.  In fact, you are going to get two meals because I think we should offer all of our students both breakfast and lunch.  After a lifetime in education, I know that you can not teach children who are hungry.  I repeat, we should feed them all.

But, what about those good intentions and the paving stones to hell?  Well, let’s look at the numbers.  There are approximately 50 million children attending school daily.  The cost to the federal government for a meal is $3.  If you feed every child two meals a day (and not just through the school year, but through the summer vacation as well) it will cost the feds $75 billion.  That sounds like a fortune until you know that the federal budget for school lunches is already almost twice that at $141 billion!  My plan feeds all students twice a day and still gives the federal government $66 billion per year to fritter away any way they want.  

Actually, that spare $66 billion will go farther than it does now because there won’t be any paper work connected with, “proving” eligibility.  If you are a student you are eligible. 

How will this affect the schools?  Well, first of all, they won’t be abetting a fraud which should help their standing in the community.  Second, if they aren’t rewarded for the number of low-income students enrolled, but for lunchroom participation, they will try harder to make the school lunch a winner.  The schools won’t be able to manipulate educational outcomes by claiming they are a, “high poverty” school.  That information will have to come from tax information, which is verifiable.

What about the students?  There is no down side to this.  If you like your sack lunch from home, fine.  If you love, “taco Tuesdays,” fine.  If you don’t have food at home and your Mom has already left for her second job by the time you go to school, you still get breakfast and lunch at school—and that is more than fine.

    What is more, I would open the school lunch room all year round, or make the school buses, “meals on wheels” during the summer vacation, like they do in McAllen, Texas.  No society ever went wrong providing food for children.  

            Feed them all and keep the faith.