The five-year-old starts school this week. In the process of enrolling her in school, I’ve been astonished at the level of welfare that is built into our school system. (This is a point that Amanda Teegarden has been trying to show me for a while). TPS, through state and federal aid, provides free/reduced-price lunches, summer feeding programs, and in some schools, free breakfast.
When my wife enrolled our child in the school of our choice school in our neighborhood, she was provided with an application for free/reduced-price lunches. She did not fill it out but the school official suggested that she apply even if we wouldn’t use it, because participation in the program is a measure used to get other aid, the free breakfasts being one of them. Apparently 99% of the students in our school qualify 1, and for the district as a whole it is 76% 2.
So what is wrong with this picture? Firstly, I reject that 99% of the students in our area, and 76% in TPS as a whole, qualify for free/reduced-price lunches. These numbers fly in the face of logic.
In my zip code the median family income is $42,335, 22% of the families make between $55K and $75K, and only 10% of the families in my zip code are below the poverty line 3. On the national scale, "the recent U.S. Census shows 27 percent more students are certified for free or reduced-price meals than the Census data itself would suggest are eligible."4
Secondly, research suggests that these programs are not solving the problem of hunger but causing the problem of obesity. "Today, the central nutritional problem facing the poor--indeed, all Americans--is not too little food, but too much of the wrong food. But despite a striking increase in obesity among the needy, federal feeding programs still operate under their nearly half-century-old objective of increasing food consumption."5
Thirdly, it is not the Government's job to feed our school children. The job of feeding and taking care of children rests with the parents. When parents fail to feed children, the local community, in conjunction with private charities, should step in and offer assistance.
Aside from the waste and poor execution created by government entitlements and subsides, this kind of program only strengthens our government's role as a welfare state, and that's not what this country was supposed to be about. David Kelley wrote an article for the CATO Institute where he contrasts the classical rights provided by our Constitution with those proposed by the Welfare State and how they are incompatible.
The classical rights express the idea of self-ownership. They reflect the Enlightenment ideas that individuals are ends in themselves and that relationships among people should be voluntary. Welfare rights, by contrast, express the idea that clients of the welfare state own the people who produce the wealth on which welfare clients depend.
That is not an expression of benevolence. By its very nature, a right is not a gift or favor for which gratitude is required. It is an entitlement, an enforceable claim to something someone else owns. But people in a free and civilized society do not own each other.
The concept of welfare rights reflects a much more expansive conception of the role of government than anything envisioned by the Founding Fathers. "For Jefferson," observes legal scholar Louis Henkin, "the poor had no right to be free from want. The framers saw the purposes of government as being to police and safeguard, not to feed and clothe and house." 6
[update Aug 20, 4:58pm]
Amanda Teegarden, pointed be to this great article about the fraud around signing kids up for the free/reduced-price lunch program and the Title 1 funding based on the percent of student participation.
Individual schools receive Title I funding based on the percentage of students that are eligible for the federally subsidized free-lunch program...The process to qualify for a free lunch comes down to parents self-reporting their income on a form that is turned in to their local school. Federal free-lunch program administrators argue that the program has little potential for abuse because "the worst that happens is a kid gets a free lunch."
Federal free-lunch data, however, are used as one of the main poverty indicators for school districts and are linked to many other local, state, and federal funding streams. So any fraud in the free-lunch program is quickly multiplied.
Technorati Tags: Tulsa
Tulsa Public Schools
welfare
welfare state
school lunch program
Title I
Chris Edwards
David Kelley
Amanda Teegarden
1 http://www.nces.ed.gov/
2 http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/ok/district_profile/490
3 http://factfinder.census.gov/
4 http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/FWA%207-7-03.pdf page 18 **
5 http://www.aei.org/include/pub_print.asp?pubID=31 **
6 http://www.cato.org/dailys/11-10-98.html
**These two points were found via a CATO institute article by Chris Edwards about food subsidies, which I would recommend reading in conjunction with this post.
http://www.cato.org/downsizing/agriculture/food_subsidies.html
10 comments:
Oh man,what a post. Where do I start.. It's a bit unnerving to me how its all a game when you get to school. Its all about making sure that lots of money is flowing through the school. Wait till you experience the school supplies drive. I've seen hidy-hole rooms chocked full of school supplies, yet if you watch the news, its all in short supply. Its all about these poor old schools - and kids.
I went to a school board meeting where the director of school lunches went on and on about how healthy their lunches were.
Everyday I would ask my son what he had for lunch - one day a hamburger, one day pizza, then another day nuggets.
I went to lunch last year with my kindergartner, and I was shocked at the crap they serve. I got the best looking thing they had - a stuffed crust pizza. OMG! how awful it was. My son took his lunch after that.
Sigh. I know.
When you move to the Union school district, do you believe that they will not ask for the same information?
When my kids were in TPS, I refused to send those forms in, even though the school begged for it. I just felt that feeding my kids was my business.
I wish we could get rid of that whole free lunch thing, for a lot of reasons.
It's frustrating that your local school is dependent on those accursed forms for funding.
The problem is, that no one stands up to make sure the poor get fed.
If so, the government never would have stepped in in the first place.
Sure it's the job of churches and charities to do it, but they don't.
Look at the churches in your city and see what they spend money on, if indeed they do have any money to spend.
Firstly, the supposition that the government stepped in because no one was standing up for the poor is false. Prior to the Depression the school lunch program in the country was largely a private concern.
Secondly I think you are greatly discounting the work that the community and private charities provide. They exist to fill the gap and they do a great job. If the Government would step aside they would do a much better job in their wake.
To anonymous,
Gosh, my heart goes out to the poor, but I see eastside kids with $100 shoes and cell phones (nicer phones than mine)on free lunch.
Difficult to have sympathy for their plight if they have a phone and text messaging.
Parents should feed their kids. If they cannot feed their kids, they should do whatever it takes(legally) to generate the funds to feed their kids
I was wondering about the welfare factor of free lunches when I refused to fill out the form twice, after continual insistence that I fill it out.
They finally shut up after I asked, "What are you going to do, expel my child because the father refuses a free meal?"
I grow weary of government schools....
I know where you live, and I am SURE the poverty rate is much higher, not to mention the fact that there is a HUGE number of illegal hispanics in your area that help crunch these numbers. The real plight here is that while it IS the responsability of individuals to feed thier own children the FACTS are they do not, PERIOD, so children go without food,in turn they perform poorly in school and then you have a whole new problem to deal with. You could always put the childrens parents in jail for not feeding them, then the jails would be even more overcrowded, and you would be paying for adults lunch instaed of a child.My charge to you is to find someone or some orginization that wants to take this problem on.(Feeding school age children) You won't find one, they don't have enough money to feed that many children. So the government steps in to help feed children in hopes that they perform better in school, and have a better chance at an equal life with the other kids who have parents who care. If you don't want to fill the paperwork out, don't. But don't pretend this is as simple a problem as government butting in and misusing taxpayer dollars. It goes much,much deeper and this is a band aid on a HUGE social problem for which there is no answer.
Again, I reject the supposition that the government fills a hole that would not otherwise be filled. In fact before the Government started feeding kids lunch, private charities did feed kids lunch.
The private sector would do a much better job, but there is not much point in them filling a hole that is already filled by the wasteful and horribly inefficient government.
Are there some families that need a helping hand? Yes.
Is it 99% in my area or 76% in TPS? No Way!
Should we sit by and watch people starve? No.
Is it Government's job to feed the poor? No.
Oh yeah, and another thing, I walked my daughter to school today, on my way home I noticed that most of the cars that were dropping kids off to school were nicer than mine.
I watched the kids, and saw how they were dressed. I looked at their shoes and their backpacks. These kids did not look like they were so poor that their parents could not make them a peanut and jelly sandwich for lunch
I live in my neighborhood, I've seen the people that send their kids to school, and I've looked at the data, so no one can tell me that 99% is a kosher number.
Steve,
Ive done some internet research you might find interesting. The research question: What is the best breakfast for school performance?
I was looking for specific foods for breakfast, you know like a menu. I know fruit loops probably are not the breakfast of champions for our little ones, but is oatmeal better that eggs? You get the point.
The results of my research so far: page and page and study after study of how kids' school performance is bettered by government subsidized breakfast programs.
The limited scientific research I found all says the jury is still out - pretty much.
I never found a list of foods. I did find lists of how to make sandwiches pretty by cutting them into different shapes, and crinkle cutting carrots. Its a shallow world we live in....
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