Quote:
Originally Posted by ilbegone
I know a number of people from several school districts and this is the picture I put together from them:
English Language learner is a big cash winner for the district - there is a huge amount of money to be raked in by keeping those ready to move on classified as English learner.
I'm not sure about the idea of the Cafeteria being used for featherbedding more employees than necessary. Anymore the cafeteria is a microwave operation to heat food actually prepared and packaged elsewhere - probably by minimum wage people not represented by any union. There's not a large employee surplus at the school in that area.
The schools have been barred from asking the the true need of a family concerning taxpayer provided meals. So, there is a mix of the genuinely low income kids and kids who are dropped off by someone who lied about necessity, sometimes from expensive cars driven by people wearing expensive clothes. On the other hand there is a good proportion of the kids from all income levels who would have nothing to eat at all besides a bag of chips brought from home if it weren't for the school meals.
And there are all sorts of reasons for the low income kids, from druggie parents to broken families and single parent families to illegal foreigners who work for nothing to those who willfully exploit the system, and also the recession which knocked the legs out from under many families.
There are a lot of fingers pointed in all directions as to who is responsible for the low educational achievement. There is "teach to the test", parents who don't care, bad teachers, district policies which don't make sense to anyone, educator bias and social engineering, kids who don't speak English, over crowded classes, the list goes on and on.
It's a mixed bag, but this is my understanding.
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You're correct that most, if not all, of the food is packaged. Most of it gets thrown away by the kids anyway. But, it is the parents responsibility to provide those kids a breakfast and lunch. No one gave me a free breakfast or lunch and I managed to do ok. If the kid is old enough they can make their own lunch and breakfast. It doesn't take much to put cereal and milk in a bowl. If the parents don't buy the food with those food stamps and there isn't food available and the kids are malnourished, there's child services; that's what they're paid to do.
We need to stop enabling parents to not be parents. The schools are not their parents. It's time the responsibility be where it belongs. Like I said, I had to make my own lunch and breakfast. If I forgot, then I was the one who paid the price by being hungry. I made sure I made that tuna sandwich the next day for lunch and got up early to eat breakfast. That was how I learned to be responsible for myself. There are a lot of life lessons that are learned when you have to be responsible for yourself.