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Comment by dominotw | Hacker News Reader

make it free

The fact that children in this country (and really anywhere) suffer from food insecurity is appalling.

Agreed. No child should ever go hungry. We also need more public awareness / education about making healthy decisions when it comes to purchasing food.

x2. Meals cost pennies compared to the trivial BS schools waste money on.

Cough cough...smartboards.

I installed around 50 of those in a 2 week period about 7 years ago. They were very expensive, and extremely poor products. They did not effectively do any of what they advertised to a competent level. However, the school sounded modern to the PTA when they said they were buying them.

A child learns better if itis hungry, crying from humiliation and desperate. Smartboards are cheap necessities, whereas a chunk of slow cooked cheap cut of meat and some lettuce, tomatoes and carrots are opulent luxury.

It is not as if research has shown that nutrition in those first years is extremely important. Who wants more of those pesky tall, healthy kids with properly developed brains and internal organs. /s

TBF that one's internal organs seem bountiful. Perhaps too bountiful.

Obese kids feel hunger too. And her obesity is even better reason to have access to nutritional food at least once per day.

So give the students fresh, healthy, nutritional food for free and then you can rightfully blame the parents for giving the kid junk. Pointing fingers does nothing, offer an alternative and let the other side shoot it down and you can honestly say you've tried.

Obesity can be caused by eating too much, but it can also be caused just by eating too many carbohydrates, the chief ingredient in our cheapest foods.

Thats a good point, I'm appalled that if they feel compelled to crack down on delinquent bill payers to the point they resort to these measures but can't look into other ways to save money.

What are their priorities in life?

Increasing bureaucracy and administration. Almost all of the extra money in increased college tuition in the last has been absorbed by the administrative part and increased amenities for the students.

Very much agreed. We lived in a poorer neighborhood a few years back and my child's kindergarten had free breakfast for all (through title 1 funding). I think it did a lot of good.

No, eliminate meal programs, cafeterias and food workers in schools.

Parents are responsible for the child's nutrition. If the parents don't provide, the school should report it to the relevant authorities (CPS, etc.).

Let schools teach: money allocated for education should be spent educating students, not feeding them.

What's the endgame here? OK, so the parents can't afford food. The kids go to school, and the school notices the kid doesn't have food. Then the parents are arrested and put in a taxpayer-paid prison. The kids are separated from their parents and put into taxpayer-paid foster home. Now the parents are miserable because they lost their kids, the kids are miserable because they don't have parents, and the taxpayers are miserable because they have to pay for your new imprisonment program.

You've come up with an expensive plan that makes everyone miserable.

Nonsense.

If the parents can't afford to feed their children then the children may be put into foster homes with parents who can properly take care of them.

Since only a few parents are (criminally) unable to feed their children, their problems are solved at minimal cost. Other students are not affected by misdirected funds paid to institutional food service vendors, school cafeteria services paid the lowest bid to feed school children instead of educating them.

Your bleeding heart shows:

"he kids are separated from their parents " - what kids wants to live with parents that won't feed them? Ans. Only abused kids.

"the parents are miserable because they lost their kids" - Hell, no. They're likely drug addicts, don't care about their kids, or are incapable of doing so. You're doing them a favor.

"taxpayers are miserable because they have to pay for your new imprisonment program" - You needn't imprison the parents; merely put their kids in decent homes.

My plan is less expensive by orders of magnitude than existing "solutions": it provides appropriate care for the few problematic kids w/o paying millions for institutional cafeterias, food workers, food refrigeration and storage, union dues and unnecessary meals for millions of kids. Money intended for education is spent on education instead of ham sandwiches and cheetos.

With the risk of being snarky, I think the endgame is to make people more productive by using the stick. I.e coercing parents into working harder by threatening to humiliate their child.

I don't think it will work out that well, though.

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