Posted on 02/19/2012 1:21:19 PM PST by John Semmens
The government’s effort to force feed America’s youth with nutritionally approved food raised its ugly head in a North Carolina pre-school this past week. The issue gained notoriety when a mother complained that school officials declared the sack-lunch of a turkey sandwich, fruit, chips, and apple juice she had prepared for her daughter was substandard and gave the child a school meal composed of chicken nuggets, milk, and a vegetable. In the end, the girl ate only the chicken nuggets.
The principal of West Hoke Elementary, Jackie Samuels, defended the program as “a crucial step toward ensuring that all children are properly fed. The lunches parents send vary considerably in their nutritional content. Some are down right awful. It is apparent that too many parents are either ignorant of or indifferent to their child’s nutritional needs. The question is whether we are going to tolerate this ignorance and indifference or take measures to insert expert guidance into the process.”
The inspection of students’ bagged lunches was characterized as a “more moderate intervention than authorized by law. We are within our rights to forbid lunches brought from home,” Samuels asserted. “If all food consumed at school were prepared by the school a more balanced and standardized nutritional offering could be put in front of every child. No child would be left to the mercy of the possibly ill-informed efforts of a parent.”
Parents who might be dissatisfied with the program were reminded that “this is a publicly funded school. As such, it will be governed by state standards. Those who can’t abide these standards are free to send there children elsewhere or home-school them if they are so inclined.”
if you missed any of this week's other semi-news posts you can find them at...
http://azconservative.org/2012/02/18/congresswoman-clarifies-who-is-entitled-to-impose-values-on-others/
Not fair. You are supposed to limit yourself to satire.
Yeah, publicly funded with the parents' TAX DOLLARS. Maybe it is the school employees/administrators/robots that should be looking "elsewhere" for employment. Also, grabbing the child's lunch had NOTHING to do with keeping to any "standards." It was tantamount to bullying to show "who was the boss."
Satire?! LOL That was so close to the truth that I bit. Should have checked the post author. :)
Why stop at lunches? There are a lot of things that parents might be ignorant of. The government could for instance pick the clothes out in the morning, wake the kids up to do calisthenics at 5:00 A.M. and pop round in the evenings to make sure the little crum crunchers are off to bed at the approved time. Install cameras in their bunk beds to make sure they aren’t actually playing plants vs. zombies on their kindle fire when they should be sleeping. And just what sort of books do they have on that Kindle, hmm. Are they sensitive to the homosexual agenda and tolerant of Muslims. We can’t let the stupid lazy parents handle all this. It’s only your life, liberty and ability to pursue happiness they want. What’s the big deal you antiquated constitution lovers?
Satire now yes, but give them a few years and it won’t be.
Imagine the firestorm if a Muslim kid had brought his halal lunch from home and was forced to eat the infidels food.
I started wondering where ALL the money goes that a student pays each week his/her school meals into the National School Lunch Program.
How many students buy school lunches in the public schools?
How many bring their own lunches [which is not a revenue into the program], but may purchase their drink?
How many children receive free lunches or a part of depending on income guidelines which do so entitle; which again is not a revenue into the program?
Money to run the NSLP has to come from the federal government and state; but what happens when the financial management is so abused with mounting losses as so typical of any government run program.
"The typical school cafeteria spends $2.91 on each meal—rather than the $0.26 to $2.72 that gets reimbursed—and relies on USDA for about 51% of its revenue. Not all of those meal costs are for food. Much NSLP money goes for overhead, leaving about a dollar to make meals."
No kid should go hungry or made to feel they are a charity case to their peers.
However, if a government's objective is to remove the option of Bring Your Lunch, because by piling on guidelines of what you can easily see becomes an annoyance of time and energy; thus the solution to fight the system by a busy working parent[s] is just cave in and buy your kids their lunches at school..then more money goes into the system for "overhead" as stated above. No one made you do it, but the underlying solution had been that all along--that carrot stick costs less than that brownie after all.
Plus we add in the breakfast program.
The USDA administers breakfast to a subset of schools through a similar process to the National School Lunch Program.
States are not required to review the breakfast program,and 26 states confirmed that they do not review breakfast programs at all.
This Lunch Program article put out by Duke goes on to say: http://sites.duke.edu/pubpol264s_14_s2011_ark10/ Then we look at the: ACCOUNTABILITY FLOWCHART The Funding and Paperwork Flow http://sites.duke.edu/pubpol264s_14_s2011_ark10/how-does-work-top/accountability/ Dizzy yet?
"This process seems relatively simple,but potential problems arise at each step. Our concern is that either (a) poor children do not have access to the lunch we promised them,or (b) taxpayer money is going to inappropriate expenses. When you consider your school’s lunch program, think about some of these issues:
which also covers "the Free/Reduced Lunch Police", the Third Party Co that must manage the program, civil rights complaints..
(In all fairness, some things just satirize themselves.)
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