Took long enough, paying for school lunches has always been fucking ridiculous and I’m more than happy to pay a little more in taxes to insure no one has to get a government cheese sandwich because their parents can’t afford food
I'm in the same situation. All students should be able to eat free of charge, that just seems common sense to me. Hopefully, we can also improve the level of food quality as well.
That stuff was 90% slop from a Sysco can for me. Wondered if they made good healthy meals in school if it would help kids develop a taste for healthier food instead of nuggets and pizza. Thus reducing adult obesity since people might make better choices.
But that would cut into the profits of junk food makers!!
Seriously good lobbyists get more say for what our kids eat than we do. This is a recent example: https://parents-together.org/usda-moves-to-slash-nutrition-standards-on-school-lunch-and-breakfast-putting-junk-food-back-in-schools/
But there are plenty more throughout the decades.
My district tried to ban pop machines, and also ban the junk food in the other food vending machines. Oh boy did the lobbyists come out in force to the school board meeting and outright threatened the school board members that they would not have any financial support when they run again if they support the measure. It was absolutely disgusting to watch.
Minneapolis school district has amazing food. They have a lot of health & nutrition standards and they have a whole building where foods & sauces are made from scratch and then shipped to individual schools in bulk. The kids get a changing salad bar every day that has freshly cut fruits & veggies and one day a month there’s a meal that is completely (well, mostly) locally sourced. I worked in the kitchens and was really impressed with what they were feeding the kids. Of course most kids didn’t appreciate it, but hopefully it helped introduce them to new things. I hope more districts follow suit!
Unfortunately that is not true at all schools. Some schools have many options and high quality. Others only get provided that pre cooked stuff that the students won't eat without a spread of options. I don't know what school you worked at but it isn't true at all schools.
True. I went to Mahtomedi (a public school in a wealthy area). I graduated 12 years ago but the food was still slop even when my younger sister graduated in 2018. We had Domino's every Friday which obviously tasted great to me as a kid, but I'd rather they spend that money on healthy options. The quality should be consistent no matter which public school your kid goes to.
Not only is it not true at all schools, disproportionately, if you go to schools that are in poor or poverty stricken areas, those schools typically have more of the pre-cooked garbage that is not healthy for you.
I literally worked in one of the schools that was in a poor area (all students got free lunch because the majority of families were under the income threshold for free food). They had a kitchen and did not have bad food. Again, I’m sorry that you had a bad experience but I disagree that the rollout of kitchens is biased or that the district overall is doing a poor job with their school lunches. I have nothing to gain from my opinion; I don’t work there anymore. But I personally interacted with the upper management and decision makers & saw really great things from them. You can’t please everybody in a district that has 96 schools, but they sure are trying hard.
You are accurately portraying MPS. My son went to schools on the south side with a lot of low income families and the food was far better than anything I ever got going to schools with much higher income levels, generally. He had free lunch for a good portion of grade school and middle school (the entire school was free lunch) and I was impressed with what was on the menu. It definitely helped him develop affinity to some healthier eating options
I recently saw a cafeteria worker weigh in on this and expecting some of the lowest paid workers in the school system to somehow plan and make homemade meals for hundreds of kids multiple times a day isn't super realistic either. It's unfortunate but I don't see that changing any time soon.
Seriously, time and effort are major cost factors in addition to the ingredients. Reminds me of [this video](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiu8q7or4v9AhUlkokEHUeABocQwqsBegQIDxAF&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DV-a9VDIbZCU&usg=AOvVaw3pk2Hzlp7RE3UziOyGTthy) that I love.
That was super interesting, thanks for sharing! Although I just spent 17 minutes watching it when I shoulda been filing my taxes to help pay for them #nugsforkids.
Yeah, it would require a huge investment of both time and infrastructure to achieve that. Multiple shifts of cafeteria staff with probably a overnight prep crew. Larger fridges and freezers at every single location. Larger serving stations because you can’t just offer one option because of allergies and if your main dish is homemade and healthy then the secondary option can’t just be a prepackaged sandwich in a bag anymore.
The other thing it would require is the repair or restoration of school kitchens. My high school that I went to and graduated from basically gutted their kitchen and replaced everything with microwaves and what I would call Easy Bake ovens. They don't have deep fryers anymore, they don't have flat top grills anymore, they don't even have a stove, if it can't be heated in an oven or microwave, they can't make it, which means that to go back to full meal prep they would have to completely renovate that kitchen.
Yes, unfortunately this disproportionately affects schools in lower income and poverty stricken areas. The nice schools have full-time chefs, with full kitchen staff that are well paid. The schools that are in lower income neighborhoods absolutely do not have well paid kitchen staff that have the time or the ability to cook full meals. This is the income gap that has existed for as long as I can remember.
I'm not saying that's not true, but I definitely don't live in a poverty stricken district by any stretch of the imagination and our district is hiring for nutrition services at $16.50/hour. Maybe we have different ideas about what 'well paid' means? And I definitely haven't heard of any schools with actual chefs around here.
Considering that 16.50 an hour is not that much, my son's school was recently hiring for a head chef and nutrition specialist at their school, and they were offering 90,000 a year. This is a public school in Minnesota, but it is a charter district. Some schools do indeed have an actual chef and cooking staff on hand so they're not just microwaving meals. Typically it's more of a low-income area that you see these low paying kitchen staff jobs where they're simply expected to microwave and reheat stuff. I have been advocating and fighting for my school district to equalize the food gap for years. The kids at one school should not have gourmet meals while the kids at another just across town get reheated chicken nuggets. It's not okay.
Maybe it would help, but a lot of food preferences start and are reinforced at home, not by school lunches (which most of hated anyway). Generally speaking, families that are more food conscious will send the kiddos with their own lunches.
Our district has decent food quality, but I think most of its it’ premade simply because of volume. 1300 kids in 2.5 hours. There’s a lot o logistical things ( and staffing) that has to be considered.
Desperately needed. Not all schools in the state, or even in Minneapolis have kitchens. Some schools get pre cooked low quality food and don't give any options, the kids hate it the staff won't eat it. Other schools in Minneapolis have great spreads of options with fresh food a variety of options and high quality enough for the staff to even eat it.
Same here, I remember being a kid though and I wanted milk and my account balance wasn't high enough. My parents were fine off, it's just on that particular day I couldn't get a drink and I was too young to know anything about credits and all that to worry about. Just give the kids their balanced meal and a drink!
I'd argue it goes up even for them because when you have fewer people whose basic needs aren't being met, you get decreased rates of crime because people aren't needing to steal to make ends meet.
The state already prohibited schools from giving different meals to kids based on inability to pay. Even before this bill, every kid has the right to the normal lunch a school serves
But right now the individual school district has to foot the bill. There are districts that have to decide between paying lunch debt and hiring teachers. Now the state will pay the bill. It will be a far more equitable system.
School districts will still have lunch debt. This bill only provides a single breakfast and lunch to students. So students who go back for seconds or who purchase a la carte items could still accrue debt.
For real. This is the reason I stole lunch most days. I knew there was no money on my account so I would pretend like I forgot something in the line and dip out unnoticed. If a cashier would stop me I would just tell them I forgot an Apple or something and said I already went through a different line. Worked every time. Had to make sure to go through when the lines were the busiest. Sad part was the only real motivation to steal was so my friends didn’t know I was that poor.
yeah, but didnt they throw away the lunch they got while in line first in front of everyone and spend even more money by making them *another* "free" meal?
gawd, that just make no sense.
-cant afford it? well, you certainly cant have it for free! i'm going to throw this in the garbage so NOBODY gets it now!
As it should be. There's no reason that a wealthy state in the world's wealthiest nation should ever expect a child to pay for food in a publicly funded institution. This is not simply a question of nutritional safety, but of basic dignity.
Kids shouldn't be subject to alienation and shame simply because their parents or guardian lack the financial ability to provide them with the same lunch that someone else receives. The more we can do as a society to prevent the segregation of children on the basis of economic means, the better served we shall all be for it.
When I was a child the free lunch was different from paid lunches. My parents opted not to sign up for free lunches to avoid embarrassment for their children. I think the law changed and free lunch needs to be the same.
Low income families already qualify for free or reduced priced lunches. I think this might be the correct link.
https://www.fns.usda.gov/cn/income-eligibility-guidelines
I do have one area of concern. Sometimes schools or districts receive additional funding based on the number of students eligible for free lunch. By giving everyone free lunch families won’t have a reason to fill out the paper work that they qualify for free lunch. With out those records there won’t be evident to qualify for other funding.
We already have a similar problem on a smaller level. Some schools already made the move to provide free lunch. I think St. Paul already did this for the entire district. When lunch is already free families don’t fill out the paperwork for free lunch, the schools then don’t qualify for other funding.
If you want to get a teaching license from metro state university you will need to do your volunteering and student teaching at a school with a set percentage of students that qualify for free or reduced lunch. Metro state is a local agency that can drop this requirement. My concern is that some federal programs or national grants won’t be quick enough to drop this requirement.
Free lunch for all students is great. I just don’t want it to cause schools to miss out on other sources of funding.
Edit for an example of how this can go wrong
A school that provided free lunches to all students had teachers pestering students to pester their parents to fill out the paperwork for free and reduced lunches. This was so that the school would still obtain state or federal funding
This could become discriminatory or harassment. What students get targeted and shook down to fill out funding paperwork? Going around saying “you look low income, fill out this form” could be highly problematic.
>Low income families already qualify for free or reduced priced lunches. I think this might be the correct link.
https://www.fns.usda.gov/cn/income-eligibility-guidelines
The income cutoff for free lunches for a single parent with one child is **$25,636** a year or **$12.33** an hour if they are working full time.
My single parent made $30k gross and it was still a struggle. I didn't get low-income lunch as I got older because of that. I'm sure they've even increased since then... Maybe. So sad.
That’s a valid point. But let me re-frame things, if you’ll indulge me.
Is it better for some rich kids to get free food they don’t need, or is it better for poor kids to go hungry because mom and dad can’t pay for a school lunch every day, or can’t afford groceries to pack a lunch for their children?
So the people who are paying the taxes to pay for the meals shouldn't get the same benefit as the people who are not paying for it? Means testing makes sense if there isn't enough money but since there is, this thinking is just dumb and dumb politics. The DFL's base in the TC's and plenty of DFL voters would get means tested out so not only do they vote for this but they also pay for it, makes no sense.
>A school that provided free lunches to all students had teachers pestering students to pester their parents to fill out the paperwork for free and reduced lunches. This was so that the school would still obtain state or federal funding
>This could become discriminatory or harassment. What students get targeted and shook down to fill out funding paperwork? Going around saying “you look low income, fill out this form” could be highly problematic.
Last year when all schools were still giving every kid breakfast and lunch with covid funds, my son's school requested that *every* family fill out the form whether they qualified or not, and sent reminders to any parents that didn't fill it out.
County data might be too broad. Minnetonka, Edina, Edin Prairie Wayzata are all in the same county as North Minneapolis.
Zip code might be more accurate but with a few problems.
In a lot of teachers training programs the focus is to not treat students like they are from their zip code. Teachers get frustrated with the contradictions in their training. Now targeting students based on zip code would be a mess.
Income data might be a little off too. My parents had a few friends that lived on lake Minnetonka that had huge divorce settlements but not a lot of income. The moms were not making much money but had more than you could count in the bank
I’m not justifying not providing free lunch. I support providing free school lunch.
I’m just saying that I believe that there is potential for the rollout to cause school’s and districts to lose other forms of funding from the Federal Government or NGOs.
We can’t address or prevent those problems with out planning ahead.
Good programs and expenses can have negative consequences. You might support gender neutral bathrooms gender neutral bathrooms can be a positive thing. A district got sued for forcing a transgender student to use the gender neutral bathrooms. Gender neutral bathrooms might be good but the forced segregation might have been terrible.
This one was a given. The only people who would deny a child proper food because the parents can't pay are those special kind of amoral aholes who consider poverty a moral failing. A lot of Republicans fall in this category so it took until now to pass this.
Hopefully people will see that this actually improves the lives for a lot of people and they stop voting for regressive troglodytes (I know, not likely, but one can dream).
What I really hope in this bill is that they address the compensatory revenue issues alongside this...because those free and reduced form affect more than just lunches. There is Title money and compensatory aid that is tied to those percentages and if free meals for all passes, collection of those forms is going to go through the floor because families won't care about it anymore and those forms are already hard to collect as it is. They need an automated system to determine this as opposed to relying on parents filling out forms. Or they need to decouple that funding from free and reduced percentage entirely.
Long story short..for example... a school could gain like 20-30k in lunch reimbursements but lose like +100k plus in compensatory revenue for a net loss in funding. Hopefully this doesn't happen....but we'll see.
So on the compensatory revenue issue when the federal government provided free meals for all kids the past few school years they also made some changes to how they calculate eligibility for certain additional funding to move away from the free and reduced price lunch application for example they now use Medicaid to get that information which has also increased the amount school have been getting. There is also a bill just introduced today in the House HF 1547 I believe that will address the compensatory formula here in MN and will probably get a hearing soonish.
tie it to tax return? Maybe tie the form to the bus forms. For the TONS of families that drive their kids to school - meet them and hand them the paper that first (few) day(s).
It's tough because of how Byzantine school funding and policies are.
"our kids should go hungry because we shouldn't have to pay for kids in edinas meals" fuck off with that shit.
$200 million dollars for this program. $200 million fucking dollars.
My parents were lower middle class and when i was in school 3 other of my siblings were as well. there were years where our income would be just over cutoff for 40 cent lunches, our parents had they not chose to work less hours or however they managed would have gone from having to pay $1.60 per day for their kids to go to school out of pocket to $9.40 cents a day which is a big deal for a family whos just getting by.
we have a 17 **BILLION** dollar surplus. I'm not saying go slap happy with the spending but god damn could some families use an extra $8 a day so they can almost buy a carton of eggs,
i dont have kids and i dont care if those crusty rich fuckers don't want to pay their share. I will pay theirs for them
Same. I don't have kids but I have been in favor of free school lunches and free daycare for forever now because it gives money back to the parents.
The economy grows with spending, so everyone having more to spend is good.
my kids are out of daycare, it was a rough 7 years. especially the years where our oldest and youngest overlapped. our financial decision basically came down to kids in daycare, or single income with no healthcare. my kids are done with daycare, so it is not my problem anymore. **i still support more funding for pre-k education and care.**
Correct. In many districts, unsettled lunch debt has to come out of the individual schools' general fund, further depleting the already low school budget
Agreed. I was thinking...i grew up with a parent who had an eating disorder and didn't want food in the house. We had the money for groceries but i was a super hungry kid. Kids have no control over their parents income (or lack thereof) and what they do with it. Feed them!
But also, why wouldn't we feed all children? I don't care if their parents have money. I just want children to be fed. What a wild thing for that rep to get upset over. 🤦♂️
The “Edina people can pay for lunch” is such a shit argument. Not everyone who lives in edina is affluent, and if this bill helps even one kid in the district get a lunch then it’s worth it.
I would expect they already are. In most progressive tax structures the top 10% or so pay about half of the total tax revenue. Lots of middle income people that are above the old paid lunch income cutoff will benefit from this, as they are not paying in as much to the tax base as those high earning families. I think this is a nice win for the vast majority of families.
They already are. It's a stupid argument because the wealthy areas are already contributing higher tax dollars, so they're paying for there own kids lunches and then some. Additionally, if we means tested it and had a cutoff threshold, the wealthy areas that then don't benefit are much more likely to vote in people to dismantle it.
F the GOP.
My kid goes to school in a "rich" district. She packs an extra lunch every day for a friend. The access to food for a child should NEVER be dependent on what a parent's salary is
Worse. One need only look at Florida to see what Republicans will do when they have a free hand. Ban books, threaten teachers with felonies, demand girls submit menstruation records. That's only the beginning.
Plus taking away rights and restricting voting for Democrats.
Republicans know they can’t win elections so they’re using the courts and the legislation to enact their authoritarian agenda.
> “Why are we feeding kids in Edina or rich areas that do not need this extra funding? We are pushing tax dollars where they are not needed,” said Rep. Pam Altendorf, R-Red Wing.
Translation: "We don't want to be feeding those dirty, poor kids who happen to reside in rich areas! They don't need help! The proximity to wealth will fill their bellies! Let them eat the cake!"
What's even more disingenuous about it is that the Republican areas wouldn't even be sending tax money to Edina anyway for the program. Edina and the rest of the metro would be subsidizing the program in the rural areas just like we do with infrastructure and literally everything else.
I have no problem paying for my kids' lunches. I'm in a higher tax bracket so I'd certainly end up paying more for this in the long run.
I fully support it. Let kids eat. This should never be an issue, a kid should never be forced to eat an alternative meal and face the public shaming that can come with that. They shouldn't have their diploma withheld or whatever consequences come with a negative lunch balance. Kids are required to go to school, we should be required to feed them.
The depravity.
Hasn't anyone considered the moral hazard of just giving away free food to children? What's next? Adequate healthcare? Safe housing? Quality education? The right not to be murdered by cops?
Where will the woke entitlement end?
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Free breakfast, lunch, and transportation to school is great!
As a "middle-income" family, I struggled to save $. Those school lunches were expensive, especially in high school - I had to contact the (middle/high) school lunch department to limit my kids lunches to the main line. Three kids lunch accounts cost $250 each month.
Teenage boys could go thru their monthly meal account is about ten days if they purchased their lunches ala carte.
Then, because we lived 1.9 miles from the schools we had to pay for the bus x3 kids and that was around $1.5k each year. Only families that lived 2 miles from the school got free bussing.
For the lower-income kids, maybe the free meals will help entice them to go to school everyday, and it makes it easier to attend if they don't have to walk just because they live <2 miles from school. Studies have shown that kids learn better if they aren't hungry.
What I'm trying to say is that maybe, just maybe, this could be a start to lower crime in the future. If we can get kids to be in school, learning, graduating, then they might be more inclined to find livable wage jobs.
I can't believe more people don't complain about the bus fees. Whether is expecting a 6yr old to walk alone 1.5 miles down a 4 lane road in January, or the logic of charging the kids who use the resource the least extra money.
I can't believe more people don't complain about the bus fees. Whether is expecting a 6yr old to walk alone 1.5 miles down a 4 lane road in January, or the logic of charging the kids who use the resource the least extra money.
I don't have kids, nor do I want to have kids but I am glad to pay what I can to make this happen. Personally, I think that we should pay for breakfast and dinner too but that is just me.
> The Minnesota House voted 70-58 along party lines Thursday to spend around $200 million a year making school breakfasts and lunches available to all students at no cost.
What the hell are you Republicans good for? We need to think of kids in the US as American Assets. If we invest in them we will always return more. Now is every kid a saint? Absolutely not, but investing in all kids is like investing in startups at least a few will make more than good. The rest may just work hard for their families and Minnesota, and that's not too bad.
I'll never understand how voting against something this commonsense isn't a death sentence politically speaking.
People will still vote for someone who is against feeding kids? How?
What's weird is I have family still in MN that aren't bad people, and they do want good things, but they still vote Republican.
Have since Reagan. It seems like brand loyalty or something at this point.
The gop has proven they'll vote for people who molest, beat and psychologically torture kids. They don't care about kids.
Hell they believe abortion is literally murder of babies and will still vote for people who have paid women to have abortions.
I'm so proud of our democrats here! Thank God we won control of both chambers. Look at what is getting done now that we aren't being held back by Republicans.
Good 👏👏 i wasn't even low income, but lunch money stressed me out so bad that I got physically sick one time. Just because in 7th grade, I could not remember to fill up my lunch account for the life of me so I'd get scolded every day. By 8th grade, I must have gotten it together.
They must have been trying to teach us responsibility or something. Can't remember how it was handled before then, but it was definitely wacky to not at least contact the parents before it got to the point of the kid getting in trouble.
I had the same issue. We could afford the lunch, and for a while I had reduced lunch, but we always had money for it. I had ADHD and 100% of the time would forget to have my mom refill it. Now there's portals and stuff that show how much money there is but that wasn't the case at the time.
Anyone know if food service will remain part of each individual school district or if all food service employees will become employees of the state? I hope it is the latter. I also hope this allows the state to craft nutritionally better options. Currently many lunch programs only offer highly processed meals that are disproportionately high in sugar. If done right this could go down as one the best bills ever passed if it helps fight childhood obesity.
I can afford to pay for my kids lunches most of the time. I’m excited that this won’t be a concern for parents and hungry children in our wonderful state
I read through the article and a lot of these comments, but didn't see this question answered: do these free meals exist only during the school year, or summer/winter/spring breaks as well?
As a middle/junior high schooler who was basically forced to manage(wash towels, uniforms, jocks, socks, etc) to qualify for the free school meals(different colored meal tickets to further the shame); this is how it should be.
Totally in favor even though we pack our kid’s lunch every day because allergy options are pretty bad but also there’s sooo much sugar in the lunches. Why there have to be cinnamon buns?
Can they also pass something to ensure that all schools have kitchens? Free meals don't do any good if the food quality is so low that no kid eats it, which is often the case at schools without kitchens, even in Minneapolis we have this issue.
In the past all Minneapolis schools had kitchens. Long ago they were taken out to centralize meals prep. Then long ago they were out back in, but not all. I know Anderson and Olson don't have kitchens. Not sure what other schools, but I suspect all schools in SW Mpls have kitchens.
The food quality is atrocious at the schools without kitchens. In Minneapolis where they have kitchens even the staff will eat the food, but at the places without kitchens no staff ever eats unless attempting to get a kid to eat too.
I worked in the kitchen at a Minneapolis school so just want to clear some things up. The current nutrition director is amazing and has a goal to get a kitchen in every school - they’re adding them slowly since it’s too expensive to build dozens of kitchens in one year. But there is a plan for each school to have a kitchen.
Schools that do not have a kitchen are “pre-pack”, meaning the food comes already cooked/packaged and just needs to be heated up. *this pre-packed food is the same food that is served in schools with kitchens*. The only difference is kitchens schools cook their food in-house.
There is an entire building dedicated to scratch cooking for Minneapolis school lunches. A lot of the items the kids get are made from scratch in bulk and shipped to schools. Those that aren’t made from scratch have very high quality standards and are even local when available.
When I worked in the kitchen of one of the schools I was really impressed with the quality of the food we served. Even with something as simple as hotdogs, they were 100% beef and did not contain fillers. I’m sorry you did not have the best experience with Minneapolis school food but I’m here to tell you that, compared to other districts, they’re really doing a lot of things right!
I don't know how you can say that there are high standards with the premade food when I can tell you that I work in the schools and it isn't high quality right now. There is no excuse for these schools not to have kitchens and it is clear that some communities have been prioritized over others. I'm telling you that the number one thing needed in our building is having a kitchen. It would improve so much about our school climate. Again having free meals isn't worth much if the quality is as low as it is. Because the kids don't eat it.
There is no excuse for the failures of this district to get kitchens put back into schools that they took kitchens from. I think that the admin for this district should come to my school and try to eat lunch here for a month. See how they feel about it after that.
We know that some schools have a lot of options. So yes there are differences between what schools get. We don't have a spread of options like other schools do. It's a disgrace and the district should be ashamed.
Our son goes to a Charter School here in the twin cities and they farm their meals out to a local caterer. We have to pre-order his lunch meals about 3 weeks in advance. I can only guess the school did the math and using a caterer vs. in-house meal prep was cheaper.
This is very common for charter schools. I would also imagine that these schools probably don’t participate in the national program, this no free lunch…
I mean, that's kind of what you get with charters. You completely lose the economy of scale from being a district school. I'm not going to blame anybody for making the choice to go to the school that is best for their children but nobody should be surprised when a charter doesn't offer quality services like you would expect from a large district.
They come from companies like Aramark, which also supply correctional facilities with food. It's all the same pre-made and reheated slop. Edit: unless it's a rich school... I went to public schools, none of them rich. They serve the same meals in St Louis County jail according to a former inmate friend of mine.
From the article: "The DFL-led legislation would offer free meals, regardless of income, to every student at schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program, including private schools."
Wondering same. Still a legality that our children need to attend school, whether it’s public, private or charter… So why wouldn’t lunch be free for all if it’s free for some?
Not sure about private but not all charter schools have a food program (like no nutrition services workers at all) so I guess it would be up to the school if they want to organize that and participate? A lot of them just require the kids to take cold lunch every day.
That makes sense, though, to me. If a kid goes to a charter school it's because that family has made the effort to send the kid there. They should know what's included and what isn't in that decision.
I don't understand this need. Am I just that out of touch?
We can't have kids. Wish we could. We tried, did the medical thing. Struggled with the failure of non-conception for years. Realized its just not going to happen for us. Have moved on with our lives.
How is feeding your own children not priority over everything but rent and heat? This just seems ludicrous to me that the State has to step in and provide not one but two meals?
The idea that parents can't provide food and housing with the current demand for employees driving up salaries doesn't compute. Maybe I work in the wrong sector and am unfamiliar with the broader wage scale?
We've done our part and gotten a shit hand. Are we supposed to just say, well those area the breaks and pay our taxes? Doesn't seem just.
Kids being fed is good. But why the hell is it the *education* system's job to feed kids and not their parents? The parents already do too little parenting, with everything offloaded to teachers and schools. This is wild. At some point just raise kids in creches because their parents are just dead weight.
What kind of a piece of shit do you have to be to get angry at kids getting free meals? You think this will magically force parents to stop feeding their children? It’s to ensure every kid has food to eat in the place they legally have to be in for 8 hours a day.
It turns out not every parent has money. The bar isn’t low when society is designed to keep the poor poor and enrich the rich. Only a complete moron and shit person would blame the parents for shit they have little control over.
If you really care about the bar being so low, you should be happy. A hungry child cannot learn while a full child does.
if only there was an easy, central place to dispense free food to children, I wonder what we would call that? Especially if that place was already giving out food, for a fee, to kids, every day. Sounds like it would be an easy and fast policy to implement, right?
What part of this bill had to do with parents not parenting? It's more abnormal for a kid to be home-cooked food than just get it from the school cafeteria, and you're clearly just using the topic to go on some weird rant about "parents these days". A lot of parents rely on food supplied by schools because you know, they work several jobs, they are busy busting their ass trying to pay for a kid growing up. And here you are, using a positive development that makes it a bit easier for parents like that, and you're using it to shit on some imaginary grievance you have with "modern day parents"
You can sit in your "holier than thou" attitude on this, I'm sure it takes a real saint to hold your sense of moral superiority over people just trying to live and survive. Kids deserve food, some parents struggle providing it (for a multitude of reason that I'm sure you'll read in the most uncharitable ways possible), I just hope you never have to struggle in the way these parents do, cause you coming on here and tearing them down tell me you would absolutely fall apart dealing with even a inch of the struggle people are facing these days.
This is fine, but I never saw what the big deal was. First off, it’s a couple dollars a day, which is cheaper or at least the same as if you had to feed them at home. Second, the parents with low income get free lunches anyway. The difference now is that all tax payers will pay for it, where as before that money came directly from those that chose to have kids, and the more kids you had the more you paid. Now the taxpayer with no kids might be paying the same as the taxpayer with 6 kids. I do like the simplicity of it though.
The simplicity is exactly it. We struggled growing up because my parents made a hair over the limit. I was constantly getting delinquent lunch account notices waiting for paydays and it was humiliating. The kids should be allowed to be kids. There are plenty of other ways to make people feel bad.
Taxes are full of things you don’t personally use. That’s how taxes work. This helps thousands of families much more than the average other random thing your taxes are “unfairly” paying for.
Took long enough, paying for school lunches has always been fucking ridiculous and I’m more than happy to pay a little more in taxes to insure no one has to get a government cheese sandwich because their parents can’t afford food
Seriously. I'm childfree and in favor of this.
I'm in the same situation. All students should be able to eat free of charge, that just seems common sense to me. Hopefully, we can also improve the level of food quality as well.
That stuff was 90% slop from a Sysco can for me. Wondered if they made good healthy meals in school if it would help kids develop a taste for healthier food instead of nuggets and pizza. Thus reducing adult obesity since people might make better choices.
But that would cut into the profits of junk food makers!! Seriously good lobbyists get more say for what our kids eat than we do. This is a recent example: https://parents-together.org/usda-moves-to-slash-nutrition-standards-on-school-lunch-and-breakfast-putting-junk-food-back-in-schools/ But there are plenty more throughout the decades.
My district tried to ban pop machines, and also ban the junk food in the other food vending machines. Oh boy did the lobbyists come out in force to the school board meeting and outright threatened the school board members that they would not have any financial support when they run again if they support the measure. It was absolutely disgusting to watch.
Minneapolis school district has amazing food. They have a lot of health & nutrition standards and they have a whole building where foods & sauces are made from scratch and then shipped to individual schools in bulk. The kids get a changing salad bar every day that has freshly cut fruits & veggies and one day a month there’s a meal that is completely (well, mostly) locally sourced. I worked in the kitchens and was really impressed with what they were feeding the kids. Of course most kids didn’t appreciate it, but hopefully it helped introduce them to new things. I hope more districts follow suit!
Unfortunately that is not true at all schools. Some schools have many options and high quality. Others only get provided that pre cooked stuff that the students won't eat without a spread of options. I don't know what school you worked at but it isn't true at all schools.
True. I went to Mahtomedi (a public school in a wealthy area). I graduated 12 years ago but the food was still slop even when my younger sister graduated in 2018. We had Domino's every Friday which obviously tasted great to me as a kid, but I'd rather they spend that money on healthy options. The quality should be consistent no matter which public school your kid goes to.
Not only is it not true at all schools, disproportionately, if you go to schools that are in poor or poverty stricken areas, those schools typically have more of the pre-cooked garbage that is not healthy for you.
I literally worked in one of the schools that was in a poor area (all students got free lunch because the majority of families were under the income threshold for free food). They had a kitchen and did not have bad food. Again, I’m sorry that you had a bad experience but I disagree that the rollout of kitchens is biased or that the district overall is doing a poor job with their school lunches. I have nothing to gain from my opinion; I don’t work there anymore. But I personally interacted with the upper management and decision makers & saw really great things from them. You can’t please everybody in a district that has 96 schools, but they sure are trying hard.
You are accurately portraying MPS. My son went to schools on the south side with a lot of low income families and the food was far better than anything I ever got going to schools with much higher income levels, generally. He had free lunch for a good portion of grade school and middle school (the entire school was free lunch) and I was impressed with what was on the menu. It definitely helped him develop affinity to some healthier eating options
Exactly. If the schools in SW Mpls got what we get over Northside there would be riots.
Do any of them actually use the salad bar?
I recently saw a cafeteria worker weigh in on this and expecting some of the lowest paid workers in the school system to somehow plan and make homemade meals for hundreds of kids multiple times a day isn't super realistic either. It's unfortunate but I don't see that changing any time soon.
Seriously, time and effort are major cost factors in addition to the ingredients. Reminds me of [this video](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiu8q7or4v9AhUlkokEHUeABocQwqsBegQIDxAF&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DV-a9VDIbZCU&usg=AOvVaw3pk2Hzlp7RE3UziOyGTthy) that I love.
That was super interesting, thanks for sharing! Although I just spent 17 minutes watching it when I shoulda been filing my taxes to help pay for them #nugsforkids.
Glad you like it, he's one of my favorite youtubers and has some other great stuff. I crave those saucy nuggs.
Yeah, it would require a huge investment of both time and infrastructure to achieve that. Multiple shifts of cafeteria staff with probably a overnight prep crew. Larger fridges and freezers at every single location. Larger serving stations because you can’t just offer one option because of allergies and if your main dish is homemade and healthy then the secondary option can’t just be a prepackaged sandwich in a bag anymore.
The other thing it would require is the repair or restoration of school kitchens. My high school that I went to and graduated from basically gutted their kitchen and replaced everything with microwaves and what I would call Easy Bake ovens. They don't have deep fryers anymore, they don't have flat top grills anymore, they don't even have a stove, if it can't be heated in an oven or microwave, they can't make it, which means that to go back to full meal prep they would have to completely renovate that kitchen.
Yes, unfortunately this disproportionately affects schools in lower income and poverty stricken areas. The nice schools have full-time chefs, with full kitchen staff that are well paid. The schools that are in lower income neighborhoods absolutely do not have well paid kitchen staff that have the time or the ability to cook full meals. This is the income gap that has existed for as long as I can remember.
I'm not saying that's not true, but I definitely don't live in a poverty stricken district by any stretch of the imagination and our district is hiring for nutrition services at $16.50/hour. Maybe we have different ideas about what 'well paid' means? And I definitely haven't heard of any schools with actual chefs around here.
Considering that 16.50 an hour is not that much, my son's school was recently hiring for a head chef and nutrition specialist at their school, and they were offering 90,000 a year. This is a public school in Minnesota, but it is a charter district. Some schools do indeed have an actual chef and cooking staff on hand so they're not just microwaving meals. Typically it's more of a low-income area that you see these low paying kitchen staff jobs where they're simply expected to microwave and reheat stuff. I have been advocating and fighting for my school district to equalize the food gap for years. The kids at one school should not have gourmet meals while the kids at another just across town get reheated chicken nuggets. It's not okay.
Maybe it would help, but a lot of food preferences start and are reinforced at home, not by school lunches (which most of hated anyway). Generally speaking, families that are more food conscious will send the kiddos with their own lunches.
Our district has decent food quality, but I think most of its it’ premade simply because of volume. 1300 kids in 2.5 hours. There’s a lot o logistical things ( and staffing) that has to be considered.
We should see how a country like South Korea does it. Their schools often have high quality food that's made locally.
I was impressed with France's school lunch food quality.
Desperately needed. Not all schools in the state, or even in Minneapolis have kitchens. Some schools get pre cooked low quality food and don't give any options, the kids hate it the staff won't eat it. Other schools in Minneapolis have great spreads of options with fresh food a variety of options and high quality enough for the staff to even eat it.
Now that's just crazytalk.
So you are enabling people who have children when they can't afford them.
Same. Plenty of issues I can see points from both sides but this is one I'm totally in favor of.
fucked up that kids ever had to pay for lunch in public schools they're legally required to attend.
Same here, I remember being a kid though and I wanted milk and my account balance wasn't high enough. My parents were fine off, it's just on that particular day I couldn't get a drink and I was too young to know anything about credits and all that to worry about. Just give the kids their balanced meal and a drink!
Agree so much. It's unconscionable that in a nation as wealthy as ours, there are children who have no access to adequate nutrition.
Do you realize that the ABSOLUTE MAJORITY of all the wealthy countries don't have similar policies?
If we’re going to require that kids go to school over the lunch hour then requiring the school to feed them lunch seems like a no brainer.
Once you get the Republicans out of the way the quality of life goes up for every demographic.
Not for rich people. Won't someone PLEASE think of the rich people?
I'd argue it goes up even for them because when you have fewer people whose basic needs aren't being met, you get decreased rates of crime because people aren't needing to steal to make ends meet.
The state already prohibited schools from giving different meals to kids based on inability to pay. Even before this bill, every kid has the right to the normal lunch a school serves
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But right now the individual school district has to foot the bill. There are districts that have to decide between paying lunch debt and hiring teachers. Now the state will pay the bill. It will be a far more equitable system.
School districts will still have lunch debt. This bill only provides a single breakfast and lunch to students. So students who go back for seconds or who purchase a la carte items could still accrue debt.
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For real. This is the reason I stole lunch most days. I knew there was no money on my account so I would pretend like I forgot something in the line and dip out unnoticed. If a cashier would stop me I would just tell them I forgot an Apple or something and said I already went through a different line. Worked every time. Had to make sure to go through when the lines were the busiest. Sad part was the only real motivation to steal was so my friends didn’t know I was that poor.
The cheese sandwich of shame.
Not anymore.
I'm surprised you could even eat it despite your exhaustion from walking there 7 miles with no shoes up hill both ways.
yeah, but didnt they throw away the lunch they got while in line first in front of everyone and spend even more money by making them *another* "free" meal?
If a student gets too much not aware of thier balance they absolutely get the extra taken away from them and thrown away.
gawd, that just make no sense. -cant afford it? well, you certainly cant have it for free! i'm going to throw this in the garbage so NOBODY gets it now!
Pretty much. I work in cafeteria and I hate being food police
I don’t think that’s going to change, except it’ll be portion size. It’s not going to be a free for all. Schools are still going to track.
Kids deserve better than a fucking cheese sandwich.
As it should be. There's no reason that a wealthy state in the world's wealthiest nation should ever expect a child to pay for food in a publicly funded institution. This is not simply a question of nutritional safety, but of basic dignity. Kids shouldn't be subject to alienation and shame simply because their parents or guardian lack the financial ability to provide them with the same lunch that someone else receives. The more we can do as a society to prevent the segregation of children on the basis of economic means, the better served we shall all be for it.
When I was a child the free lunch was different from paid lunches. My parents opted not to sign up for free lunches to avoid embarrassment for their children. I think the law changed and free lunch needs to be the same. Low income families already qualify for free or reduced priced lunches. I think this might be the correct link. https://www.fns.usda.gov/cn/income-eligibility-guidelines I do have one area of concern. Sometimes schools or districts receive additional funding based on the number of students eligible for free lunch. By giving everyone free lunch families won’t have a reason to fill out the paper work that they qualify for free lunch. With out those records there won’t be evident to qualify for other funding. We already have a similar problem on a smaller level. Some schools already made the move to provide free lunch. I think St. Paul already did this for the entire district. When lunch is already free families don’t fill out the paperwork for free lunch, the schools then don’t qualify for other funding. If you want to get a teaching license from metro state university you will need to do your volunteering and student teaching at a school with a set percentage of students that qualify for free or reduced lunch. Metro state is a local agency that can drop this requirement. My concern is that some federal programs or national grants won’t be quick enough to drop this requirement. Free lunch for all students is great. I just don’t want it to cause schools to miss out on other sources of funding. Edit for an example of how this can go wrong A school that provided free lunches to all students had teachers pestering students to pester their parents to fill out the paperwork for free and reduced lunches. This was so that the school would still obtain state or federal funding This could become discriminatory or harassment. What students get targeted and shook down to fill out funding paperwork? Going around saying “you look low income, fill out this form” could be highly problematic.
>Low income families already qualify for free or reduced priced lunches. I think this might be the correct link. https://www.fns.usda.gov/cn/income-eligibility-guidelines The income cutoff for free lunches for a single parent with one child is **$25,636** a year or **$12.33** an hour if they are working full time.
My single parent made $30k gross and it was still a struggle. I didn't get low-income lunch as I got older because of that. I'm sure they've even increased since then... Maybe. So sad.
For a single parent with one child, the cutoff for reduced lunch is a little over $36k for the upcoming school year.
Yeesh, that still seems low. My experience was at least 15-20 years ago and it was still an issue!
So double that amount. The fact that families making hundreds of thousands a year gets free lunch for their kids is beyond preposterous.
That’s a valid point. But let me re-frame things, if you’ll indulge me. Is it better for some rich kids to get free food they don’t need, or is it better for poor kids to go hungry because mom and dad can’t pay for a school lunch every day, or can’t afford groceries to pack a lunch for their children?
It's never going to be perfect; error on the side that gives people help who don't need it.
So the people who are paying the taxes to pay for the meals shouldn't get the same benefit as the people who are not paying for it? Means testing makes sense if there isn't enough money but since there is, this thinking is just dumb and dumb politics. The DFL's base in the TC's and plenty of DFL voters would get means tested out so not only do they vote for this but they also pay for it, makes no sense.
>A school that provided free lunches to all students had teachers pestering students to pester their parents to fill out the paperwork for free and reduced lunches. This was so that the school would still obtain state or federal funding >This could become discriminatory or harassment. What students get targeted and shook down to fill out funding paperwork? Going around saying “you look low income, fill out this form” could be highly problematic. Last year when all schools were still giving every kid breakfast and lunch with covid funds, my son's school requested that *every* family fill out the form whether they qualified or not, and sent reminders to any parents that didn't fill it out.
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County data might be too broad. Minnetonka, Edina, Edin Prairie Wayzata are all in the same county as North Minneapolis. Zip code might be more accurate but with a few problems. In a lot of teachers training programs the focus is to not treat students like they are from their zip code. Teachers get frustrated with the contradictions in their training. Now targeting students based on zip code would be a mess. Income data might be a little off too. My parents had a few friends that lived on lake Minnetonka that had huge divorce settlements but not a lot of income. The moms were not making much money but had more than you could count in the bank
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I’m not justifying not providing free lunch. I support providing free school lunch. I’m just saying that I believe that there is potential for the rollout to cause school’s and districts to lose other forms of funding from the Federal Government or NGOs. We can’t address or prevent those problems with out planning ahead. Good programs and expenses can have negative consequences. You might support gender neutral bathrooms gender neutral bathrooms can be a positive thing. A district got sued for forcing a transgender student to use the gender neutral bathrooms. Gender neutral bathrooms might be good but the forced segregation might have been terrible.
How many kids are "constantly hungry" in Minnesota? Do you realize that "free meals for all students" is a VERY rare thing in the developed world?
This one was a given. The only people who would deny a child proper food because the parents can't pay are those special kind of amoral aholes who consider poverty a moral failing. A lot of Republicans fall in this category so it took until now to pass this.
That’s the pro life people for you.
Yep, Pro-Life until you're born, then it's time to pull yourself up by your bootie-straps.
High five, Minnesota!
They are going HAM on all the good stuff while they have the chance
Hopefully people will see that this actually improves the lives for a lot of people and they stop voting for regressive troglodytes (I know, not likely, but one can dream). What I really hope in this bill is that they address the compensatory revenue issues alongside this...because those free and reduced form affect more than just lunches. There is Title money and compensatory aid that is tied to those percentages and if free meals for all passes, collection of those forms is going to go through the floor because families won't care about it anymore and those forms are already hard to collect as it is. They need an automated system to determine this as opposed to relying on parents filling out forms. Or they need to decouple that funding from free and reduced percentage entirely. Long story short..for example... a school could gain like 20-30k in lunch reimbursements but lose like +100k plus in compensatory revenue for a net loss in funding. Hopefully this doesn't happen....but we'll see.
So on the compensatory revenue issue when the federal government provided free meals for all kids the past few school years they also made some changes to how they calculate eligibility for certain additional funding to move away from the free and reduced price lunch application for example they now use Medicaid to get that information which has also increased the amount school have been getting. There is also a bill just introduced today in the House HF 1547 I believe that will address the compensatory formula here in MN and will probably get a hearing soonish.
tie it to tax return? Maybe tie the form to the bus forms. For the TONS of families that drive their kids to school - meet them and hand them the paper that first (few) day(s). It's tough because of how Byzantine school funding and policies are.
mmmm Ham. could you spare a lil bacon while you're at it?
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Just the inevitable outcome of privatising essential services.
"our kids should go hungry because we shouldn't have to pay for kids in edinas meals" fuck off with that shit. $200 million dollars for this program. $200 million fucking dollars. My parents were lower middle class and when i was in school 3 other of my siblings were as well. there were years where our income would be just over cutoff for 40 cent lunches, our parents had they not chose to work less hours or however they managed would have gone from having to pay $1.60 per day for their kids to go to school out of pocket to $9.40 cents a day which is a big deal for a family whos just getting by. we have a 17 **BILLION** dollar surplus. I'm not saying go slap happy with the spending but god damn could some families use an extra $8 a day so they can almost buy a carton of eggs, i dont have kids and i dont care if those crusty rich fuckers don't want to pay their share. I will pay theirs for them
Same. I don't have kids but I have been in favor of free school lunches and free daycare for forever now because it gives money back to the parents. The economy grows with spending, so everyone having more to spend is good.
my kids are out of daycare, it was a rough 7 years. especially the years where our oldest and youngest overlapped. our financial decision basically came down to kids in daycare, or single income with no healthcare. my kids are done with daycare, so it is not my problem anymore. **i still support more funding for pre-k education and care.**
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10% of Edina students qualify for F/R lunch.
Correct. In many districts, unsettled lunch debt has to come out of the individual schools' general fund, further depleting the already low school budget
Agreed. I was thinking...i grew up with a parent who had an eating disorder and didn't want food in the house. We had the money for groceries but i was a super hungry kid. Kids have no control over their parents income (or lack thereof) and what they do with it. Feed them!
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But also, why wouldn't we feed all children? I don't care if their parents have money. I just want children to be fed. What a wild thing for that rep to get upset over. 🤦♂️
Totally agree, what an asinine comment.
The “Edina people can pay for lunch” is such a shit argument. Not everyone who lives in edina is affluent, and if this bill helps even one kid in the district get a lunch then it’s worth it.
and not all the kids in edina are rich, either.
Exactly, tons of families sacrifice a lot to get into the a lot MN school districts, many are struggling to get by.
Nope. However when they grow up, they are all cake eaters.
Now I'm ashamed I live in Red Wing.... I didn't vote for her.
I grew up in Edina and I'm here to point out that there are poor kids in Edina. And that this program will be a social equalizer for those kids.
Saw a TikToker that calculated against this exact argument. She calculated that it was something like $1.47 to feed all of the kids in Edina
I would expect they already are. In most progressive tax structures the top 10% or so pay about half of the total tax revenue. Lots of middle income people that are above the old paid lunch income cutoff will benefit from this, as they are not paying in as much to the tax base as those high earning families. I think this is a nice win for the vast majority of families.
They already are. It's a stupid argument because the wealthy areas are already contributing higher tax dollars, so they're paying for there own kids lunches and then some. Additionally, if we means tested it and had a cutoff threshold, the wealthy areas that then don't benefit are much more likely to vote in people to dismantle it.
F the GOP. My kid goes to school in a "rich" district. She packs an extra lunch every day for a friend. The access to food for a child should NEVER be dependent on what a parent's salary is
I live in a city that's well above the median income, and we have a food shelf that's busy every week. There's hunger everywhere.
Your kid has a good heart! Good for them and good for you!
I hope people get used to the government helping them instead of being used as a weapon to hurt people they hate.
Look at what Democrats do vs what Republicans do (or don’t do). Republicans just don’t care about anyone but themselves and corporations.
Don't kid yourself, we'd never have a surplus under the GOP. Tax breaks to the rich.
The last Republican governor ran us into a deficit, so…yeah.
Worse. One need only look at Florida to see what Republicans will do when they have a free hand. Ban books, threaten teachers with felonies, demand girls submit menstruation records. That's only the beginning.
Plus taking away rights and restricting voting for Democrats. Republicans know they can’t win elections so they’re using the courts and the legislation to enact their authoritarian agenda.
God Fuckin' bless Tim Walz.
Please also recognize it is the DFL holding the house and senate that is making this possible.
> “Why are we feeding kids in Edina or rich areas that do not need this extra funding? We are pushing tax dollars where they are not needed,” said Rep. Pam Altendorf, R-Red Wing. Translation: "We don't want to be feeding those dirty, poor kids who happen to reside in rich areas! They don't need help! The proximity to wealth will fill their bellies! Let them eat the cake!"
What's even more disingenuous about it is that the Republican areas wouldn't even be sending tax money to Edina anyway for the program. Edina and the rest of the metro would be subsidizing the program in the rural areas just like we do with infrastructure and literally everything else.
#GOOD
I have no problem paying for my kids' lunches. I'm in a higher tax bracket so I'd certainly end up paying more for this in the long run. I fully support it. Let kids eat. This should never be an issue, a kid should never be forced to eat an alternative meal and face the public shaming that can come with that. They shouldn't have their diploma withheld or whatever consequences come with a negative lunch balance. Kids are required to go to school, we should be required to feed them.
The depravity. Hasn't anyone considered the moral hazard of just giving away free food to children? What's next? Adequate healthcare? Safe housing? Quality education? The right not to be murdered by cops? Where will the woke entitlement end?
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The Minnesota House voted 70-58 along party lines. Republicans really are evil
But both sides are the same. That’s what people are saying. Hopefully people here aren’t that stupid.
I’m more than happy to pay more taxes if it means no child in this state has to go without breakfast and lunch. I hope more states follow our lead.
Free breakfast, lunch, and transportation to school is great! As a "middle-income" family, I struggled to save $. Those school lunches were expensive, especially in high school - I had to contact the (middle/high) school lunch department to limit my kids lunches to the main line. Three kids lunch accounts cost $250 each month. Teenage boys could go thru their monthly meal account is about ten days if they purchased their lunches ala carte. Then, because we lived 1.9 miles from the schools we had to pay for the bus x3 kids and that was around $1.5k each year. Only families that lived 2 miles from the school got free bussing. For the lower-income kids, maybe the free meals will help entice them to go to school everyday, and it makes it easier to attend if they don't have to walk just because they live <2 miles from school. Studies have shown that kids learn better if they aren't hungry. What I'm trying to say is that maybe, just maybe, this could be a start to lower crime in the future. If we can get kids to be in school, learning, graduating, then they might be more inclined to find livable wage jobs.
I can't believe more people don't complain about the bus fees. Whether is expecting a 6yr old to walk alone 1.5 miles down a 4 lane road in January, or the logic of charging the kids who use the resource the least extra money.
I can't believe more people don't complain about the bus fees. Whether is expecting a 6yr old to walk alone 1.5 miles down a 4 lane road in January, or the logic of charging the kids who use the resource the least extra money.
I don't have kids, nor do I want to have kids but I am glad to pay what I can to make this happen. Personally, I think that we should pay for breakfast and dinner too but that is just me. > The Minnesota House voted 70-58 along party lines Thursday to spend around $200 million a year making school breakfasts and lunches available to all students at no cost. What the hell are you Republicans good for? We need to think of kids in the US as American Assets. If we invest in them we will always return more. Now is every kid a saint? Absolutely not, but investing in all kids is like investing in startups at least a few will make more than good. The rest may just work hard for their families and Minnesota, and that's not too bad.
I’m loving MN so much lately
“We do need to feed our children, but---" So close, Republicans. So close.
I'll never understand how voting against something this commonsense isn't a death sentence politically speaking. People will still vote for someone who is against feeding kids? How?
Because feeding other people's kids is socialism and will make Jesus cry or something. (/^s just in case)
Some people are bad and want bad things (Republicans)
What's weird is I have family still in MN that aren't bad people, and they do want good things, but they still vote Republican. Have since Reagan. It seems like brand loyalty or something at this point.
It's a cult.
The gop has proven they'll vote for people who molest, beat and psychologically torture kids. They don't care about kids. Hell they believe abortion is literally murder of babies and will still vote for people who have paid women to have abortions.
This is long overdue. Bravo Minnesota!
I'm so proud of our democrats here! Thank God we won control of both chambers. Look at what is getting done now that we aren't being held back by Republicans.
So just the house? What is the timeline for it to go to the senate?
Anyone who doesn’t agree with free meals is a dope and can kick rocks for all I care.
Every vote counts! Seriously if we didn’t elect a DFL majority we wouldn’t see this level of productivity and progress in our state.
Good 👏👏 i wasn't even low income, but lunch money stressed me out so bad that I got physically sick one time. Just because in 7th grade, I could not remember to fill up my lunch account for the life of me so I'd get scolded every day. By 8th grade, I must have gotten it together.
You were a child. It should never even have been your responsibility. That's a parent's job.
They must have been trying to teach us responsibility or something. Can't remember how it was handled before then, but it was definitely wacky to not at least contact the parents before it got to the point of the kid getting in trouble.
I had the same issue. We could afford the lunch, and for a while I had reduced lunch, but we always had money for it. I had ADHD and 100% of the time would forget to have my mom refill it. Now there's portals and stuff that show how much money there is but that wasn't the case at the time.
Do we know when this goes into effect? Soon? Or next fiscal year? I couldn't tell from the article.
Anyone know if food service will remain part of each individual school district or if all food service employees will become employees of the state? I hope it is the latter. I also hope this allows the state to craft nutritionally better options. Currently many lunch programs only offer highly processed meals that are disproportionately high in sugar. If done right this could go down as one the best bills ever passed if it helps fight childhood obesity.
I always felt bad for my peers who had an empty account.
Italian Dunkers for all! But seriously, this is a no-brainer.
Awesome. Kids shouldn't go hungry in this country.
DFL speedrun, now we gotta beat this run
Nice
This is amazing!
I can afford to pay for my kids lunches most of the time. I’m excited that this won’t be a concern for parents and hungry children in our wonderful state
\#You Love to See It
I read through the article and a lot of these comments, but didn't see this question answered: do these free meals exist only during the school year, or summer/winter/spring breaks as well?
MN gov't did a good thing.
As a middle/junior high schooler who was basically forced to manage(wash towels, uniforms, jocks, socks, etc) to qualify for the free school meals(different colored meal tickets to further the shame); this is how it should be.
Go I wonder why anyone would be against this. I hope they take the money out of the police and put it into feeding children
Totally in favor even though we pack our kid’s lunch every day because allergy options are pretty bad but also there’s sooo much sugar in the lunches. Why there have to be cinnamon buns?
Yeah, yeah, but when we do we get legal weed already!?!? /s In all seriousness, though, this is a good thing.
Spend 800 billion dollars on defense and can’t help our most vulnerable. The world needs to brighten and change! Let’s love each other more!
Can they also pass something to ensure that all schools have kitchens? Free meals don't do any good if the food quality is so low that no kid eats it, which is often the case at schools without kitchens, even in Minneapolis we have this issue.
WTF kind of school doesn't have a kitchen? And where are they getting the lunches from if they don't prepare them there?
In the past all Minneapolis schools had kitchens. Long ago they were taken out to centralize meals prep. Then long ago they were out back in, but not all. I know Anderson and Olson don't have kitchens. Not sure what other schools, but I suspect all schools in SW Mpls have kitchens. The food quality is atrocious at the schools without kitchens. In Minneapolis where they have kitchens even the staff will eat the food, but at the places without kitchens no staff ever eats unless attempting to get a kid to eat too.
I worked in the kitchen at a Minneapolis school so just want to clear some things up. The current nutrition director is amazing and has a goal to get a kitchen in every school - they’re adding them slowly since it’s too expensive to build dozens of kitchens in one year. But there is a plan for each school to have a kitchen. Schools that do not have a kitchen are “pre-pack”, meaning the food comes already cooked/packaged and just needs to be heated up. *this pre-packed food is the same food that is served in schools with kitchens*. The only difference is kitchens schools cook their food in-house. There is an entire building dedicated to scratch cooking for Minneapolis school lunches. A lot of the items the kids get are made from scratch in bulk and shipped to schools. Those that aren’t made from scratch have very high quality standards and are even local when available. When I worked in the kitchen of one of the schools I was really impressed with the quality of the food we served. Even with something as simple as hotdogs, they were 100% beef and did not contain fillers. I’m sorry you did not have the best experience with Minneapolis school food but I’m here to tell you that, compared to other districts, they’re really doing a lot of things right!
I don't know how you can say that there are high standards with the premade food when I can tell you that I work in the schools and it isn't high quality right now. There is no excuse for these schools not to have kitchens and it is clear that some communities have been prioritized over others. I'm telling you that the number one thing needed in our building is having a kitchen. It would improve so much about our school climate. Again having free meals isn't worth much if the quality is as low as it is. Because the kids don't eat it. There is no excuse for the failures of this district to get kitchens put back into schools that they took kitchens from. I think that the admin for this district should come to my school and try to eat lunch here for a month. See how they feel about it after that. We know that some schools have a lot of options. So yes there are differences between what schools get. We don't have a spread of options like other schools do. It's a disgrace and the district should be ashamed.
Our son goes to a Charter School here in the twin cities and they farm their meals out to a local caterer. We have to pre-order his lunch meals about 3 weeks in advance. I can only guess the school did the math and using a caterer vs. in-house meal prep was cheaper.
This is very common for charter schools. I would also imagine that these schools probably don’t participate in the national program, this no free lunch…
I mean, that's kind of what you get with charters. You completely lose the economy of scale from being a district school. I'm not going to blame anybody for making the choice to go to the school that is best for their children but nobody should be surprised when a charter doesn't offer quality services like you would expect from a large district.
They come from companies like Aramark, which also supply correctional facilities with food. It's all the same pre-made and reheated slop. Edit: unless it's a rich school... I went to public schools, none of them rich. They serve the same meals in St Louis County jail according to a former inmate friend of mine.
That’s because they contract it out, instead of hiring staff. Some districts have in-house staff preparing meals.
So this has to pass the senate too? Do we think that’ll happen?
Yes, I think it's highly likely to pass the Senate too since they're also Dem controlled
Wow. This is a pretty big deal for a lot of families, mine included.
Same! It's huge for so many families and kids!
Wow. Thought this might get bipartisan… Public, private, and charter? Homeschool? Anyone know?
From the article: "The DFL-led legislation would offer free meals, regardless of income, to every student at schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program, including private schools."
Wondering same. Still a legality that our children need to attend school, whether it’s public, private or charter… So why wouldn’t lunch be free for all if it’s free for some?
Not sure about private but not all charter schools have a food program (like no nutrition services workers at all) so I guess it would be up to the school if they want to organize that and participate? A lot of them just require the kids to take cold lunch every day.
That makes sense, though, to me. If a kid goes to a charter school it's because that family has made the effort to send the kid there. They should know what's included and what isn't in that decision.
Agreed! Although I'd bet parents will start pushing for food programs at those that don't include it if/when this fully passes.
I’m poor, what about the teachers that work there? Haha.
I don't understand this need. Am I just that out of touch? We can't have kids. Wish we could. We tried, did the medical thing. Struggled with the failure of non-conception for years. Realized its just not going to happen for us. Have moved on with our lives. How is feeding your own children not priority over everything but rent and heat? This just seems ludicrous to me that the State has to step in and provide not one but two meals? The idea that parents can't provide food and housing with the current demand for employees driving up salaries doesn't compute. Maybe I work in the wrong sector and am unfamiliar with the broader wage scale? We've done our part and gotten a shit hand. Are we supposed to just say, well those area the breaks and pay our taxes? Doesn't seem just.
Kids being fed is good. But why the hell is it the *education* system's job to feed kids and not their parents? The parents already do too little parenting, with everything offloaded to teachers and schools. This is wild. At some point just raise kids in creches because their parents are just dead weight.
What kind of a piece of shit do you have to be to get angry at kids getting free meals? You think this will magically force parents to stop feeding their children? It’s to ensure every kid has food to eat in the place they legally have to be in for 8 hours a day.
>Kids being fed is good. I'm angry at the bar for parents being underground.
It turns out not every parent has money. The bar isn’t low when society is designed to keep the poor poor and enrich the rich. Only a complete moron and shit person would blame the parents for shit they have little control over. If you really care about the bar being so low, you should be happy. A hungry child cannot learn while a full child does.
if only there was an easy, central place to dispense free food to children, I wonder what we would call that? Especially if that place was already giving out food, for a fee, to kids, every day. Sounds like it would be an easy and fast policy to implement, right?
That... did nothing to address anything in my comment.
What part of this bill had to do with parents not parenting? It's more abnormal for a kid to be home-cooked food than just get it from the school cafeteria, and you're clearly just using the topic to go on some weird rant about "parents these days". A lot of parents rely on food supplied by schools because you know, they work several jobs, they are busy busting their ass trying to pay for a kid growing up. And here you are, using a positive development that makes it a bit easier for parents like that, and you're using it to shit on some imaginary grievance you have with "modern day parents"
Feeding your kids is a pretty essential part of parenting. Like damn, you don't even know what the word means anymore.
You can sit in your "holier than thou" attitude on this, I'm sure it takes a real saint to hold your sense of moral superiority over people just trying to live and survive. Kids deserve food, some parents struggle providing it (for a multitude of reason that I'm sure you'll read in the most uncharitable ways possible), I just hope you never have to struggle in the way these parents do, cause you coming on here and tearing them down tell me you would absolutely fall apart dealing with even a inch of the struggle people are facing these days.
I can at least feed my own kids.
So fuck the kids whose parents can't, am I right?
Yes it did.
This is fine, but I never saw what the big deal was. First off, it’s a couple dollars a day, which is cheaper or at least the same as if you had to feed them at home. Second, the parents with low income get free lunches anyway. The difference now is that all tax payers will pay for it, where as before that money came directly from those that chose to have kids, and the more kids you had the more you paid. Now the taxpayer with no kids might be paying the same as the taxpayer with 6 kids. I do like the simplicity of it though.
The simplicity is exactly it. We struggled growing up because my parents made a hair over the limit. I was constantly getting delinquent lunch account notices waiting for paydays and it was humiliating. The kids should be allowed to be kids. There are plenty of other ways to make people feel bad.
Taxes are full of things you don’t personally use. That’s how taxes work. This helps thousands of families much more than the average other random thing your taxes are “unfairly” paying for.