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Comment by parkingrift | Hacker News Reader

This is not an issue for the federal government to solve. States should set up their own systems as needed to solve their own unique needs. This is how the system of government is supposed to work in the US.

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I believe there should be guardrails to the idea of state-by-state experimentation; and that one of them should be “children should not go hungry.”

It’s just the decent, moral thing to do. Such a guardrail is appropriate at the federal level.

The federal government isn't directly involved with local education. States should be in charge of this, as they always have been. We need not bloat the federal budget further. Individual states are more than capable of funding themselves, as they always have.

And yet, kids go hungry. This temporary expansion seriously improved the situation. Why go back to the status quo, of kids going hungry?

Why would any individual state choose to let their citizens go hungry?

A great question. I don’t know why or how people can be so cruel.

And yet: kids go hungry. It happens, and so we should not allow it. If individual states choose to allow kids to go hungry, then those states should not be allowed to make that choice.

That’s why federal intervention is warranted. States don’t seem to be doing the right thing.

The federal program reimburses local schools who are able to adapt to local circumstances. https://www.fns.usda.gov/disaster/pandemic/cn-2021-22-waiver... is a long list of associated waivers allowing local flexibility. What "unique needs" aren't being met here?

Yes thank you I know that the federal government was reimbursing local schools during the pandemic. That's the entire point of this article.

However, education is at the state level, not the federal level. Individual states should fund their own school lunches as needed.

The need for school lunches is one lunch per child per day. Is there some more specific local need that the existing program is interfering with, like buying food from local producers or providing culturally appropriate meals? Or are you just stating support for some general libertarian position?

I'm stating a literal fact that education is funded locally and it always has been. Always as in the entire history of the United States.

According to the article, millions of kids who are getting free food from the schools won't be after June. So going forward the "local funding" for some kids will be out-of-pocket from lower-middle-income parents, and for other kids "local funding" will be going hungry. I don't think this is how things should be but if you disagree, all right.

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