Posted on 04/26/2013 10:32:33 AM PDT by reaganaut1
...
Offering free breakfasts to all interested students in low-income areas, not just to those who qualify under federal guidelines, is a program that some state legislators are trying to expand to schools in poor neighborhoods across Texas.
Senate Bill 376, written by Senator Eddie Lucio Jr., Democrat of Brownsville, would require schools to offer free breakfast to all students at public schools where 80 percent or more of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals.
“As one of 10 kids growing up in Brownsville many years ago, I understand the struggles that parents go through to maintain their households and feed their children,” he said.
The left-leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities estimates that the bill could mean a morning meal for as many as 731,000 additional students.
The bill has passed the Senate and will go to the House.
Under the School Breakfast Program, which began in 1966, children whose household income is below 185 percent of the federal poverty line are eligible for a low-cost school breakfast; those below 130 percent receive free breakfasts. (For the current school year, 185 percent of the poverty level is $42,643 for a family of four; 130 percent of the poverty level is $29,965 for a family of four.) The federal government reimburses the school for each meal served. The program, and a similar one for lunches, is administered by the Agriculture Department.
Research has shown that students who eat breakfast do better in school. But in Texas, participation in the School Breakfast Program is less than 60 percent of that of the National School Lunch Program. Childhood nutrition advocates say the stigma of receiving free breakfasts when other students eat at home keeps some students from participating.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Come on, GOP politicians. Have the guts to say "No!". Does Governor Perry go along with this?
One more step to putting everything under the control of the government.
One more step to three hots and a cot. Just add bars to the windows and cable TV ... and schools in poor areas might as well be prisons.
SnakeDoc
Right. Let’s just get rid of the BS hypocrisy and give free meals to the entire population, breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack. It will be a great jobs program because think of all the cooks and servers we will need to hire. And the “rich” can pay for it all.
When I was a kid, parents fed their own children. They didn’t demand that others feed them. That was a different time.
Encouraging people to be poor is a viable political strategy for only one political party. There is no conceivable benefit to approaching this as a bipartisan issue upon which compromise migth be wise. Kill it. Kill it with fire.
And while a good breakfast is key to learning, a) not everyone needs to be provided with something that they can get on their own (and therefore will appreciate it more and waste it less), and b) what they're serving aint all that good.
I thought I was paying lots of taxes already to feed, clothe, and house the poor unfortunates . . . now we have to feed, clothe, and house them again?
It’s amazing how our taxes disappear in Washington, and then we’re steadily being bombarded with “Feed the Poor,” “Harvest for Hunger,” Food Banks, and BLAH BLAH BLAH.
Now we’re going to serve “FREE B’FASTS TO ALL STUDENTS IN POOR AREAS.” FREE? Really? How’zat?
We are but a shadow of our former selves as a nation. We’re pretty much “The United States of free shit” now. Taxpayers are fleeced, government fat-cats just get fatter, while they toss trinkets from their stolen booty to keep the parasite class clamoring for more.
When my 5 kids were growing up and going to school, we (my husband and I) provided lunch (as well as breakfast, dinner, and snacks) for them.
We were on a very tight budget for many of those years, but I packed very nutritious lunches.....
PNB&J was a mainstay, as well as homemade pimento cheese, egg and olive salad and tuna fish. Nothing fancy—but they all grew up to be healthy adults.
Many districts don’t stop at supplying breakfast to the poor little fatherless waifs. Lunch follows and then supper.
Next it will be sleeping quarters.
As long as the state’s taxpayers have to pick up the tab I say bring back orphanages and take the kids out of the hell holes run by whores. Most of these kids never knew their fathers and neither did their whoring mothers.
What the hell are food stamps for?
When August rolls around, there will be school buses in the parking lots of all the local Walmarts, with “FILL THIS BUS WITH SCHOOL SUPPLIES FOR THE KIDS!” painted on the side. Also, members of the city council will take turns at the door, badgering people to buy some extra notebooks, etc. for the “disadvantaged.”
During the 1970s, when I was in elementary school, there were poor black kids, and yet they all managed to show up with the necessary school supplies. What changed?
Pardon me while my head explodes
Think of food stamps as “school breakfast privatization vouchers.”
Do poor minorities need to pay for anything?
In my city, if you are a minority and can graduate high school, a foundation here is willing to pay completely for college education - no loans, nothing!
It sucks to be middle class in this country.
My ‘don’t give a crap’ bell rang a long time ago. Their for the children mantra doesn’t work on me. We are tapped out from ‘giving’.
Next up: manicure vouchers for three-inch-long nails.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.