Took a page from St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS) and decided to give every child free meals at Minnesota schools - all 501 school districts - and it kind of makes sense ...
Its hard to concentrate on learning if your stomach is grumbling, or you can smell lunch being cooked (I remember that one, beef gravy always smelled so good! Even though I brought a lunch, I didn't buy).
But it seems that what he didn't plan was on how many kids there actually were ... or the cost of the food -- because the price of the program has more than doubled by the sounds of it.
Some people are worried that the "rich" in MN are getting a free lunch ... I understand the concern. If you can drive an Escalade you can afford to feed your kids.
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I was watching At Issue (KSTP, local ABC) and they had s man from the DFL platform in MN (I want to say he was a spokeman, but I wasn't paying that close of attention to tell the truth) and he said that its "really embarrassing" for kids to have to prove they qualify for the Free Lunch program.
Um, except, its not the kids that fill out the form - its the parents! And yes, it is kind of embarrassing, but this is a whole different generation of parrents.
As time has gone on, the democrats in MN have done a really good job at getting people into the "gimme" mind set .... that is, they don't feel they should have to work for it ... they should simple get it because they paid their sales tax, gas tax, state income tax, county tax, and in many cases municiple tax ... yup, there are cities in MN which tag on their own form of sales tax, and if you order online and happen to share the first 3 digits of a zipcode with those cities, likely you have been charged the tax as well with no way of getting out of it, or getting it back!
And then there's always the property tax which seems to grow by leaps and bounds lately (I have got to do a post on this one again).
Any how - back to the Gimmes -- in MN, as several other large metropolitan areas in the US, they have become very "socialistic" on how they look at life.
Governor Walz is trying to say that they "underestimated" how many children there were in the state -- even though every child has to register with the state, even home-schoolers, and tell where they are going to be educated.
In the 1990s I looked into Home Schooling my kids when I found they simply were not teaching my oldest daughter jack-diddly ... but we simply moved to a new district and in a year she went from testing at a 0.5 grade level (yep, kindergarten level) to nearly 4th grade in reading and 5th grade in math. (Thanks SPPS, you guys SUCK)
Any how ... we moved to a small school system - 5 elementary schools (K-4), 2 middle schools (5-8), 1 high school (9-12+) on the public side - and boy were they on their game!
My kids were getting Free Breakfast at SPPS ... yup, my daughter was that far behind and still being fed for free, without my knowledge btw! How embarrassing ... but this is a whole different story ... oh my problems with public schools is soooo dramatic.
So when we moved, we set up money in the kids lunch accounts so they could buy milk for lunch ... but since my daughter had gone to a school where they had Free Breakfast, she started going for breakfast .. and whizzed through her acct in no time at all. I straightened it all out - after much hair pulling and gnashing of teeth trying to explain to my daughter that she couldn't get breakgast anymore. Just to have the same issue in the middle school with my youngest daughter in the other direction. Like I said, I could write plenty.
Back to he Free Meals program -- wow am I going off track -- every year, no matter what, one of the required forms we had to fill out for the school was the Free/Reduced Meal form ... its a simple form you filled out which listed every one who lived in your household, what the household income was, how many children you had, and what schools they attended.
We qualified for Reduced priced lunches only twice at the new school distric ... but we never qualified for Free lunch - while I have vision issues (major ones), hubby had a job and while tight we could put food on the table.
I think the issue is what they are feeding the kids.
For many of the kids in St. Paul - Minneapolis, they rarely see fresh veg ... meat is usually in ground form ... starches are generally the largest part of the meal.
I grew up in a large family (9 total, even more if my brothers brought friends home for supper which was often) - we survived off soup/stew, Wonderbread, PB&J, and milk ... if there was fried chicken, something was up (at least until Danny found that "worm" in his chicken thrigh that turned out to be an artery, but Ma just couldn't buy it anymore)
Any ways -- we grew up without fast food (at least until high school, when we found there was a Burger King right across the street) ... we did pretty damned good too.
Of all us kids, we all got our diplomas/GED, 4 of us went on to get a higher education ...
It is amazing to hear that suddenly, people don't know how to pack a damned lunch for their kids!!!
Its easy:
Sandwich - any kind will do, I had so many PB&Js growing up I can't stand them anymore ... meat (leftovers work) ... cheese (although this has gotten expensive)
Fruit - this can be a banana, an orange (these were rare when I was in grade school and a real treat), or an apple (oh the memories I have of these)
Snack - think "dessert" ... it can be a small bag of chips, or a baggie made from a larger bag (when we got them, this is usually what my mom would do) ... or a leftover peice of cake, I remember licking the frosting off the inside of a baggie ... anything really - nowadays pudding cups are fairly cheap.
There really isn't much of an excuse not to be able to feed your kids ... just stop trying to live a Chanpaigne Life On A Beer Budget, as my mother used to say ... Let's teach kids how to SAVE maney ... save food ... economize.
There are so many other ways to prep these kids for whats coming ... instead of making them more reliant on government ... and setting us up to be the next 1970s Soviet Union.
I have got to find some footage of the Bread Lines in Russia during that time ... not so much like the ones in the US during the Great Depression ... but more about food shortages to the point where people would wait in these huge lines just to buy a single loaf of bread IF there was any left by the time they got to the front.
So sad... oh the memories of those times are so clear ... and so sad.
Any how -- ramble, ramble, ramble.
We are setting our kids up to go that same way ... the Stand-In-Line generations lets call them.
So sad ... so defeating
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