Elk Grove School District Offering Seamless Summer Feeding Program to Area Students
June 5, 2015 | The Elk Grove Unified School District's Food & Nutrition Services will be leading a joint-effort to provid...
https://www.elkgrovenews.net/2015/06/elk-grove-school-district-offering.html
June 5, 2015 |
The Elk Grove Unified School District's Food & Nutrition Services will be leading a joint-effort to provide nutrition programs for students on break for summer recess.
The Nutrition Services department is joining forces with local community partners to provide meals, free of charge, to children under the age of 18 during the summer months. The Seamless Summer Feeding Program, which is funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), allows school districts to provide meals in neighborhoods with greater than 50 percent free or reduced eligible populations. Meals are served to children free of charge and there are no income requirements for those that participate.
Elk Grove Unified Food & Nutrition Services will be working with a variety of community partners to provide free meals at parks in South Sacramento and North Elk Grove communities. Food & Nutrition Services will also provide meals at two Sacramento Public Library locations, Southgate and Valley Hi-North Laguna.
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Why? Can someone explain this to me? So, anyone under the age of 18 gets to just drop in and eat for free whether they need it or not, and the taxpayer gets to pay for it. How did our society get to this point - where parents aren't even expected to feed their kids anymore? The government will take care of it. I'm not advocating letting children starve if there is truly a need, but I want to see what kind of car that family is driving, how many trips they've taken to Disneyland in the last year, if the shoes on their feet are designer brand or an outrageously expensive sports brand, and most of all, how many times they eat in a restaurant in a month. Free food for absolutely no reason, paid for by me. That makes me sick!
Where do I get my free meal, cellphone and health insurance?
I wouldn't be so concerned about the money, about $11.6 billion in FY 2012 for the entire school nutrition program, and the parents rolling up in designer shoes. The real threat is the Wall Street big wigs playing with the financial system - privatizing profit and socializing risk. Sure, a few lazy parents getting a free $2 lunch for their kid is not the threat to our society - it is Wall Street Investment bankers. Let's keep things in perspective here.
I'm a "Teach your children some values" advocate. Lazy parents sending their children off for a free lunch is MOST CERTAINLY a threat to our society! It is teaching their children to expect something for nothing and that they don't have to earn anything because someone else will provide it. By the way, that's the same mentality that burglars have - they just take what other people earn. Most of us have had to work for what we have. By the way, I bet every kid that shows up for a free meal has a cellphone. If I had to choose between feeding my child or giving them a cellphone, I know which I would choose.
The locations are all in Sacramento...assume Elk Grove is covered in some other way. I wonder though, I keep hearing the EG Food Bank is having trouble keeping up with their heavy load and would assume that would to include school age children.
Elk Grove Unified School District is only involved in putting out meals in the most needy and poor areas of the state of California. If you look at the zip codes being served, they are 95823 and 95828. Those two zip codes have the highest poverty rates, highest rates of infant mortality and morbidity, and the absolute worst outcomes for economic success of its citizens. Sacramento County has focused the efforts of a Blue Ribbon Commission on the disproportionate mortality of African American children in those very zip codes.
Remember that the Elk Grove Unified School District also covers Valley High and Florin High school service areas, which are outside the city limits of Elk Grove.
And, by the way, this program is paid for by the US Department of Agriculture, so the Elk Grove Unified School District gets funding to pay the wages, turn on the lights, and deliver the food for these needy kids.
That's the same federal agency that pays huge corn, soy, beef, and other subsidies to enormous agribusiness welfare mommas like Archer Daniels Midland, ConAgra, and the like.
This program is affiliated with what used to be called food stamps, and is a drop in the bucket compared to the aforementioned huge ag subsidies.
Come back to me after you've held a 580 gram premature infant in your hands, delivered by a nutritionally-deprived, 15 year old teen girl.
Finally, it's the euphemistically named "Thrifty Food Plan," managed by the USDA, that determines the standard for measuring poverty in this country.
That's the fox guarding the henhouse,and it hasn't been updated in decades.
If we're really concerned about curing poverty in our country, then let's try a $20/hour minimum wage.
For now, let's at least feed the kids.
Michael Harrington
Wow, wow, wow - where do I begin? It's always amusing when someone points at one example of wrongdoing to justify another. Yes, ag subsidies are wrong. What does that have to do with anything else? Next, regardless of the zip code of the program or whether the program is paid for by local, state or federal government, it's still my tax dollars. I have worked every day of my life and still do to pay for those giveaways, very often to people who see no point in working because they can live free on the government. I feel bad for the premature baby but was undernourishment of the 15 year old mother the problem - or is the problem the fact that 15 year old children are getting pregnant? Would giving her free food or free anything, other than birth control, have prevented that? I bet she had a cellphone! And a $20 an hour minimum wage? I can't tell if that was a joke or not. I have a college degree and many years of experience and I have worked my butt off in $12 an hour jobs until I worked my way up. Why don't people understand that giving things to people, with the exception of the truly unfortunate and needy, takes away all incentive? How are you going to convince someone to stay in school and learn something when they know they can go to work at McDonald's for $15 or $20 an hour? Why should unskilled, inexperienced and uneducated labor be paid the same as someone who cared enough to actually get an education and develop skills?
Feed the children.
Anon 8:54;
Perhaps if minimum wages were raised, low wage families who you rail against may not have to rely on the various government programs WE individual taxpayers all support. By allowing hard working adults to be paid a below-poverty level (many of whom are confined to part-time status), we taxpayers are subsidizing the vast number of employers and multi-national corporations who offer nothing more than minimum wage.
Sure, the price of your kids Happy Meal might go up by a buck, and hedge fund managers will have a few less Dom Perignon-soaked orgies, but isn't allowing people the opportunity to make a better wage and be weaned-off government programs what you are all about?
One last point. Obviously I cannot guess what your age is, but let me tell you a little about hard work and opportunity. Several of my peers are recent college graduates and are having a tough time finding anything other than minimum wage or low skill jobs. Any no, we weren't Art History Majors! A friend has a business degree (2014) from the Cal State system with a good GPA, did internships, about $25,000 in loans and the only work he can find is an on-call server at the Falls Event Center here in Elk Grove.
I suspect when you came up, there was more opportunity than in today's post-recession era.
Is your friend sorry he did all that? Why did he go to college and get his business degree? Why did he work really hard to earn a good GPA, work internships to gain skills and experience, and go into debt for his education? I'll tell you why: he had incentive, drive, values, self-respect, a plan for the future, and he's now qualified to compete for a job against another good candidate when the time comes. Maybe someone explained to him early on that if he didn't finish school and prepare for the real world, he might have to work at McDonald's. That used to be a cliché but at 15 or 20 bucks an hour, why bother with school! He could have played video games and hung out at the mall all day instead of going to school - and still potentially make $30,000 - $40,000 a year.
This issue isn't black or white. Some people are hard working and deserve to be paid more than they are. Some people don't want to work and think they are entitled to hand outs. You can argue about that until you are blue in the face. It will never change. There are some people at McDonald's, for example, that deserve $15 an hour - those who have worked there for at least a year, proven themselves to be good employees by doing a good job, showing up for work every day, treating customers nicely, etc. The new employee showing up for work on the first day does not deserve $15 an hour. I find customer service to be deplorable in most stores. I wonder who is hiring these people. They don't deserve $15 an hour but when I finally find a friendly, helpful employee, I hope they are making more. It is not black and white. Just because you have a job doesn't mean you are a good employee and deserve a higher wage.
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