Free food for all! Government waste!

[FCTP]

Submitted by Vic Cirillo, Government Watch, with a special thanks to Derby Ulloa

Want a free lunch? Take a seat at your local school cafeteria.

A new federal program is giving Florida’s public schools a way out of verifying whether students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

Summer Free Food Program

The solution: expand subsidized meals to include all students whether they can afford to pay or not.         

Known as the Community Eligibility Option, schools and even entire districts can now receive free breakfast and lunch if 40 percent or more of students’ families are identified as low-income.

That includes 83 Duval County schools, 58 schools in Pinellas County and 48 schools in Polk County — to name three of Florida’s 67 eligible counties.

Map Locator for Free Meals

Students whose families receive food stamps, cash assistance or are Head Start eligible automatically count towards a school’s qualifying percentage.

Extending federal benefits to those who may not need them is going too far, critics argue.

While it’s unpopular for public officials to oppose programs that purport to help needy children, some experts say there is more to CEO than meets the eye.

Joy Pullman, an education senior fellow at the free-market Heartland Institute, told Florida Watchdog, “The Congressional Budget Office estimated this program would cost taxpayers an extra $11 billion for just the first 11 states that participate.”

“Federal school lunch programs also encourage families to think they don’t need to be responsible for feeding their own children,” Pullmann said. “But, more practically, when the feds subsidize something, they get to define all the parameters.”

CEO was established under the Healthy, Hungry Free Kids Act of 2010. Florida became eligible this year, and the program will become a nationwide option in the 2014-15 school year.

According to advocacy groups like the Food Research Action Center and No Kid Hungry Center for Best Practices, program benefits include eliminating the collection and processing of subsidized meal applications, reducing social stigmas by offering all students the same meals at no charge, and opportunities to adopt other programs like Breakfast in the Classroom.

Scholars like Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute have long held that subsidized breakfast and lunch programs no longer serve their intended purpose of reducing hunger.

Florida Watchdog contacted the Cato Institute for comment but was referred toEdwards’s 2009 report, which states that subsidized school meals may ironically “contribute to the problems of excess weight and obesity in many young people.”

There’s also a question of fairness, Pullman said. “Federal administrators plan to raise lunch prices for middle-class and wealthy families to offset these costs,” she said.

The normal application process still exists in non-qualifying Florida schools. Even then, verifying whether students are eligible for the entitlement has its limits.

According to the National School Lunch Act, school districts are only required to confirm the reported income of 3 percent (or 3,000, whichever is less) of submitted applications.

The low threshold combined with lax verification efforts often leads to higher-income families receiving subsidies intended for the truly needy, Edwards said.

A recent Miami-Dade County Public Schools inspector general’s report cited aSouth Florida teacher who gamed the free lunch system by fraudulently understating her income by $58,000 on her application.

According to the report, she was not only able to acquire free meals for her children, but as a result, obtained free tutoring, free test waivers and free college applications totaling more than $2,000.

Advocates consider the reported increase in the number of students eating free breakfasts and lunches in participating states as evidence the program is working. Skeptics like Pullman aren’t buying it.

“The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act caused a record number of school districts (approximately 200) to drop federal lunch subsidies,” she said.

“The best way to empower communities and families is to address their problems locally.”

http://watchdog.org/111333/free-lunch-in-florida/

[Leanne King]

Patty, could you give me the bill numbers so I can pull them and educate myself on the items you mention. Greatly appreciate all that you do to dig into these issues.  Thank you

[FCTP]

One more way to break our economy and create a nanny state. The most important thing we can do this year is make sure everyone votes! Make sure your friends and family vote! It will only get worse if we don't. Hate to keep pushing, but the iElect program will allow you to see if that happens. It's quiet, it's private, your list is yours only, and no one uses your information. It's already recorded at the Supervisor of Elections so it's information already available.

[Carole McManus]

Seems to me "someone" is working to care for all children at the hand of being able to "provide."......take care of you.  Hopefully parents will see and KNOW who is responsible for the feeding of their child/children.  Who should be the caretaker(s) of the children..........parents or the government?

A great posting.................thanks Vic and Derby!

[Franklin W.]

Free lunch program.  A volunteer teacher at each of these schools standing out side handing out donated apples....one per student.

Simple, efficient, gets the job done.

[Gigi Cimino]

This is all true!  This summer, my son's school offered free lunch to everyone!  They sent flyers home and you did not have to qualify!

Not only that, when Daniel went to the YMCA camp during the summer, they offered all the kids free lunch everyday.  The lunch options were disgusting, by the way, nothing even close to healthy!  I'm sure there was a lot of food wasted because they did not even get a count on how many kids were going to participate, they just brought in the food!  I would rather Daniel eat a sandwich everyday than this food.  We did not participate.

[Steven Chandler]

My daughter said that we fed our dog better then the prison food they served. They can have it for free. Eat that slop up.

[sabrina Wheeler]

This is  another way to indoctrinate our children - that Government takes care of you. The Plantation grows with or without our support.

[Eric VanDenhende]

The free breakfast and lunch programs may lead to obesity, but they certainly lead to waste. Kids typically dump a lot of food because they just don't like what gets served. But they take it 'cause it's free. To them, somebody has to pay for it.