We don't have children starving in schools
I can feed my own kids, I don't need them picking up an extra slice of pizza every day for fun and throwing milk and plates and disposable utensils in the garbage. Ask any lunch worker about the additional garbage and waste it generates.
The correct solution is to remove the barriers stopping children from getting free lunch- stop requiring parents to sign up for it. If a lunch aide feels like a kid needs food, they should be able to sign them up without anyone having to know about it or consent to it. Let the schools give kids in need double lunches if they want them and/or something to take home with them. Double down on the kids in need, don't force it on everyone.
The place where I grew up handled this in the best possible way: Every kid got a lunch if they went through the lunch line, without exception. The school system simply kept track of which students got a meal, and at the end of the month, they'd either mail a bill or it would be covered through the free lunch program.
Under this system, there was no opportunity for students or staff to pass judgement on students for their financial situation.
No, as I said above, every kid got a lunch without exception. The record keeping was unidirectional. The lunch line tallied the quantity of lunches that were handed out to each student and reported this to the district, but the district did not report back anything about paying bills to anyone at the school. Nobody in the lunch room knew anything about the finances of any student. They were tasked only with handing out lunches.
> Parents have to sign up and too many don't give a crap
This is better to make a problem of the district's finance department, not the individual school. They can solve this by mailing bills to parents and/or information about signing up for lunch programs. This is not a problem to solve by holding a child's lunch hostage.
Now my middle schooler will choose two cookies and a juice and the lunch attendant doesn’t bay an eye. Any retroactive punishment is long after he’s enjoyed his food treats or diabetes in early adulthood.
> a terrible solution for needy children
The kids who previously weren't getting fed are now getting fed, aren't they?
Giving random overworked, often bigoted people the power to let a kid eat or not? What could possibly go wrong?!
[1]: https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/child-hunge...
https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/M...
Happy to be corrected if I'm misreading this. But if I understand correctly, they go into it on page 8, and there are basically two ways they calculate food insecurity.
The first is a weighted average of variables that are unrelated or indirectly related to food - including income, race and disability rate.
The second is self-reporting (basically asking households if they need more money for food).
Hmm.
Historically wealthy and high status people were "fatter" and had pale skin. It signaled that you had ready access to food and didn't work outside.
Now high status people are thin/muscular and have tanner skin - cheap and quick food is terrible for you and it signals you have the time to workout, pay for a trainer/gym membership, go on vacation to sunny destinations, aren't chained to a desk/working retail, can pay for and have access to high quality and fresh foods, etc.
More and more high quality and healthy food is expensive and/or requires more time to prepare and plan. If you're shuffling between multiple minimum wage jobs you're often eating fast food all day because you either can't afford or don't have time for anything better.
Then start looking at food deserts[0]. Stop at a bodega in a poor neighborhood that serves as the only food source around and prepare to be shocked at the absolute garbage they have available that's still covered by SNAP.
[0] - https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts
I absolutely believe the administrators when they say that the meals some of the kids get in school might be the only ones they get for the day (by far not the majority: those are hard working parents, dedicated to their kids). And watching how much hand-holding is needed for some of the families on the pre-school-year paperwork day (back to school night) I am fully convinced that the worst-off kids are likely to wind up without food if their receiving it depends on their parents filling out forms.
And I want to be clear that the kids I think might be on the edge are not (in most cases) there because of neglect. They are there because living here is more expensive than their parents can afford completely, despite working long hours. That is a condemnation of a society that mis-appropriates the wealth (like on Engineers like me).
Yes, it is a waste of money that my kids (kids of a Silicon Valley Engineer) get their food for free, but looking at the alternative (kids going hungry), is it really that much of a waste?
EDIT: Downvotes for compassion, HN is rough today!
Also, there are two kinds of starvation: in one case the quantity of food is insufficient, in the other its quality is. Eating fries with soda in great quantity every day could still starve a growing kid.