I
read an article the other day about how school districts were turning down
“federal” money rather than complying with the new school lunch requirements
Michelle Obama had helped to establish.
I hope that what alarmed me alarmed you as well. Specifically, the adjective used to modify the
noun “money”. My concern is not
grammatical.
According to an August 21, 2014 Bloomberg Businessweek article, “The National
School Lunch Program, which is run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food
and Nutrition Service, reimburses public schools 30¢ for each paid lunch and $3
for each free one. To get the money, schools must abide by the government’s new
limits on calories (750 to 850 for high schools, roughly the amount in a deli
sandwich and a bag of chips); saturated fat (less than 10 percent of total
calories, so there go the chips); and, starting this year, sodium
(1,420 milligrams, reduced to 740 mg by 2022—or about a dill pickle’s
worth).”
The Businessweek article goes on to state,
“When the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was passed in 2010 as part of Obama’s
Let’s Move! campaign, advocates praised it for attempting to combat childhood
obesity. ‘We’ve seen the connection between what our kids eat and how well they
perform in school,’ President Obama said when he signed it into law. The USDA
set a series of increasingly strict rules to be introduced over 10 years,
starting in 2012. ‘I currently have one lunch entree that meets the a la carte
requirements: grilled chicken breast on a whole-grain bun,’ says Julia
Bauscher, director of nutrition services for Louisville’s public schools and
president of the national School Nutrition Association (SNA). ‘But I can’t
serve condiments with it. How many kids are going to eat grilled chicken with
absolutely nothing on it?’”
Man, it is getting tough out there – no condiments. But don’t fret too much. Not everyone is suffering. Mr. J. Christian Adams – an election lawyer, who served in the Voting Rights Section at the U.S. Department of Justice, reported on October 28, 2014, “While Michelle Obama’s skimpy school lunch mandates have been widely rejected by students and schools, the elite private school attended by both Obama daughters will be serving chicken wings and potato chips on Wednesday. Sidwell Friends is the elite private school with a $36,264 tuition per child where President Obama sent his daughters instead of Cardozo high school, a government-run school in Washington, D.C. After Wednesday’s chicken wings, on Thursday Obama’s daughters can get a Cuban sandwich. Pasco County Schools in Florida had to eliminate Cuban sandwiches because they violated Michelle Obama’s lunch standards.” I’ll bet they get condiments too.
It seems nowadays if you want free money you
have to rough it. There used to be an
old saying, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Back in 1950, a New York Times
columnist attributed that maxim to economist Leonard P. Ayres, who also
happened to be an army general. Sometime
shortly before General Ayres died in 1946, a group of reporters approached the
general with the request that he give them one of several immutable economic
truisms he had garnered from his lifetime of economic study... “It is an
immutable economic fact, that there is no such thing as a free lunch” the
General told them.
In an August
1, 2014 letter from the Upson County School Nutrition Director we were informed
that the Thomaston-Upson School District would be implementing a new option under
the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs called the Community
Eligibility Provision (CEP) for the 2014-2015 school year. The letter went on to say, “Great news for
you and your students! All enrolled students are eligible to receive a healthy
breakfast and lunch at school at no charge to your household each day of the
2014-2015 school year….Your child(ren) will be able to participate in these
meal programs without having to pay a fee or submit an application. We encourage all students to eat breakfast
and lunch at school.”
Well I guess the
General had never been to Thomaston (or thousands of other American locales),
because not only is there a free lunch, but there’s a free breakfast too. There
is only one little problem with this scheme – there is no such thing as
“federal” money.
It is time for local,
state, and federal government officials to stop treating taxpayer’s money like
it belongs to them.
The column above was originally published 12 NOV 2014 in The Upson Beacon .
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