I'm all for free public education for poor kids. Is it really necessary to give free public education to all Palo Alto kids independent of financial status?
Snark aside, the answer is: it's much simpler to manage a program that offers the same thing to everyone regardless of income than it is to manage a program that has to work out who deserves it. And offering it to all avoids stigma.
Why would a human being feel that feeding children is NOT their responsibility?
Clearly you have never had to be the "free lunch kid", or idealize your childhood independent of the cruelty of "different". You are extremely privileged.
The idea that we'd limit what kids we fund for meals, education, etc. is just gross and bifurcates any moralistic or democratic ideals.
The US has a serious problem with "bootstraps" and whatnot. Which really means, survival of the sh1tt1est.
If you feel that investing in the future of your community is BS, stop living in a community.
You don't have kids? Cool!
Meanwhile, you don't feel like you need to contribute to the future you wish you had secured for yourself without struggle? F*ck you. Your community is an investment in the continued existence of a people with similar DNA as yourself.
It is beyond my understanding to fathom how in 2022 we're all still trying to deal with false scarcity as some sort of reality.
There is MORE than enough for everyone, but we don't really care about that beyond a family or clan directive. That's a shame for any culture.
I was at the house of the owner of a company I worked for. I mentioned my amusement at seeing a school bus in this very rural area on the way to his house. He complained that he didn’t have kids so he didn’t see why he should have to pay for that. I replied that, as my employer, he was benefiting from my public school education. That ended that conversation.
It’s not defunding education. It’s saying rather than waste money on something unnecessary over here (like free lunches for the wealthy) let’s spend it on something better (like teacher salaries).
If you have a progressive tax system, excess government aid used by wealthy families is more than made up for by the higher tax rates those families pay. In exchange, you end up with programs that are simpler to operate, have less red tape, and have a broader base of political support.
Let’s say there is a 22 to 1 student to teacher ratio. And 20 don’t need the free lunch but you give it to them anyways. Let’s say you’re spending $5 per meal per kid. That’s $100/day. 180 days per school year. $18k per class.
It could be higher, it could be lower. Certainly it’s enough to be out to good use.
The additional subsidy for free lunches in the US currently is closer to $3.60, and you are massively overestimating how many additional free lunches would be consumed. The majority of school lunches consumed are already free. In 2019[1], 20.1 million free lunches were served compared to 7.7 million full price (and 1.7 million reduced price). And even the "full price" lunches are partially subsidized. So even assuming that all of the students in that class are eating school lunches (they aren't; only about 60% of kids do), the difference is more like 5-6 "unnecessary" lunches, not 20. The real number would likely be significantly lower than that.
“Free lunch” isn’t free if one pays enough tax to cover its cost and other free things that they receive. Given there’s already progressive taxes, what’s the benefit of having income threshold for free lunch programs (or similar assistance programs)?
Universal “free lunch” is cheaper to manage, avoids filtering out children who needs it (but is filtered out due to administrative error or rigid rules), prevents children’s embarrassment, etc.
It's not about the kid in Palo Alto who doesn't need it, but gets it anyway.
It's about the kid who lives in poverty and should get it, but doesn't, because their family didn't properly submit forms A65, B39, and F12 proving their annual income meets the ever-changing requirements.
Giving a benefit to everyone is by far the simplest and most effective way to be sure no one falls through the bureaucratic cracks (though it's probably more accurate to call them gaping chasms than 'cracks').
You’re suggesting that buying free lunches for the 92% of students who don’t need it [0] is more efficient than just paying teachers more or hiring more intervention specialists or counselors?
Many parents who can afford things still don't pay for them for their kids. Not sure why nobody thinks of those kids, there ought to be millions of them...
You think there are millions of US American school-age children whose parents voluntarily undernourish them? Out of 73 million children under 18 in the US, that's at least several percent. Do you have a citation?
>>Also, giving every kid the same treatment is a good idea in general as it reinforces the idea that they should be treated equally.
Actually what it does is teach kids they should depend on the government for handouts - even if there families can easily afford to pay their own way. Not a message I would choose to send.
I keep asking the same thing about why it's necessary for malloc to give so much memory to Electron, but they are way less friendly on the glibc mailing list to that argument for some reason.
Most likely only those who need it will take it, and making it available to everyone makes it simpler to manage.
I went to a public school in Uruguay and we had a daily free meal (not really lunch, it was more of a snack, school ran 13 to 17 for me) and I never went to get mine, but I always had a couple of classmates who didn't get a square lunch at home and they went to get that.
The Palo Alto school meals are by no means healthy. At least at my kindergartner’s school last year, nothing’s really prepared onsite, it’s mostly microwave-in-a-bag fast food (factory made burritos, pizza, 2-ingredient sandwiches). Often this would come with a side of fruit (canned and sweetened) and crackers.
My kid would always bring a lunch from home but often return with it uneaten, because when you pit healthy home cooked food against microwaved pizza and crackers, for a six year old, it’s no contest.
I’m still supportive of the program - if there are starving kids in our community, of course having free options is great, I just wish they’d managed to have a cook onsite so it wouldn’t be so factory-made and artificial.
There's an added cost if you want to sort through which kids qualify and which kids don't. Trying to filter kids out also reduces the program's reach for kids which do qualify for various reasons.
>And then the government gets to decide what the lunches are for everyone.
Well, no. You always have the option to bring your lunch if you can afford it. So the government gets to decide what the lunches are for poor people who don't have another option. Take that for what it is, but shit lunch is better than no lunch, ask any hungry person.
Necessary is a bad way to evaluate because it often devolves into whether or not it is "absolutely necessary". Of course the answer is often times no.
Rather than embrace minimalism, the better question is if it is more efficient to run the program that way and often times, universal programs are indeed more efficient.
