Demand is skyrocketing:
Nearly 20 million children now receive free or reduced-price lunches in the nation’s schools, an all-time high, federal data show, and many school districts are struggling to cover their share of the meals’ rising costs.
Through February, nationwide enrollment in free school lunch programs was up 6.3% over the same time last year, to 16.5 million students, based on data from the U.S. Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), which subsidizes the programs. Participation in reduced-price lunch programs rose to 3.2 million students, the data show.
Demand in some states has climbed at an even greater rate: Enrollment in free lunch programs jumped almost 17% in California, and several states — Arizona, New Jersey, Utah and Vermont — also saw more than 10% growth.
Many new enrollees are believed to be first-timers from families hit by the recession, says FNS Administrator Julie Paradis. “These programs are intended to expand when the need is greater … and we’re pleased that they’re working,” she adds. “But certainly there are additional costs, and that is a concern at a time of scarce resources. Our state and local partners are stretched.”
Just click your heels and say “green shoots.”
JGabriel
How are them damn kidz ever gonna learn to live in a capitalist society if’n we don’t make’em compete for their food?
Damn sociaIists, teachin’ our kids that there’s such a thing as a free lunch!
.
DaBomb
There was story about that here where I live. It was the news a couple days ago. They offering free breakfast and lunch for kids during the summer. To qualify, all you have to be is under age 18. There were alot of kids participating. Sign of the times.
Scott
Maybe our kids can eat those green shoots!
amorphous
Nothing says “family values” like starving children.
Stephen1947
I just gave a friend a copy of “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” – the Heinlein version, not Judy Collins’ – for his birthday – so you’d think I’d be all snarky about this – but I’m just relieved that we as a society can do at least this much for those in need, and wonder when we as a society will stop letting ourselves be crippled by right wing delusions about rugged individualism.
someguy
No child left behind.
Well, okay, 18-20 million of ’em maybe.
But other than that, not a one.
Thanks, Preznit Turkney!
The Grand Panjandrum
@someguy:
Fixed.
You continue to see these numbers grow for about twelve months even if the economy bottomed out this summer … and that’s the good news.
JDM
Hm, after the genocide of the Black Panther Party, I remember all the reich republiKKKans stepping up for the hot breakfast program in the Oakland elementary schools. I’m sure they’ll be good for this, too, although school lunch programs are wasteful luxuries which should exist, if at all, only on a privatized basis.
jon
When my mom taught high school, she ran a kitchen from a back room. She bought loaves of bread, lots of peanut butter and jelly, juices by the case, and gallons and gallons of milk, and gave it out to her students. She never judged them, never questioned if they really needed a loaf of bread for the weekend, and never advertised that she was spending a couple hundred dollars a month to feed the very poor, since she didn’t want to have any publicity from the food police and she didn’t do it for any purpose other than feeding kids (and their younger siblings.) It seems absurd that there is hunger in this country, and it’s even worse that many of these students got free breakfast as well as lunch, but there they were: students who fell asleep in class because they were working most nights to help pay their family’s rent.
Everytime I see a rise in the rate of children receiving free or reduced-cost lunches, I try to remember that those numbers would always be much higher if not for people like my mother, people who have more pride than sense when it comes to their hungry children, and people who are too busy working their two or three jobs to go to a government office to fill out paperwork.
SpotWeld
Forgive my cluelessness, but what is “green shoots” a reference to?
Matthew Hooper
Now, this is flat out silly of you, Mr. Cole.
For starters, the “green shoots” metaphor was meant to imply that things are going to get better. It doesn’t mean that they’re good now.
Much more importantly, this little statistic doesn’t even tell us anything about if the economy is better or worse now than it was last fall. I can guarantee you that there are fewer school lunches being served today than there at any point during the previous school year.
Because it’s summer.
If we still have record high numbers of kids in the school lunch program, it might be significant. As it stands, all this data point tells us is that the economy was remarkably bad from February 2008 until April of this year. And frankly, we already knew that.
R-Jud
Food pantries in general are experiencing huge demands, so it’s no surprise the school lunch program is following suit.
Generally you just fill in the form and hand it back to the school receptionist (at least, that’s how it was seven years ago in the Chicago Public Schools). I helped more than a few parents with their forms after watching students coming in with only a bag of cheetos and a juice box for “lunch”. In some cases the form wasn’t getting filled out because Mom or Dad couldn’t read and write well enough to do it.
jrg
jon, your mom sounds like a wonderful woman. The world would be a better place with more people like her.
My fiance teaches a number of poor kids. For many of these kids, the school lunches and breakfasts are the only food they get. She worries about them during the summers and over the weekends, because she knows they might not be eating.
It’s so sad. So many kids suffer without even being given a chance. For a lot of these children, America may as well be a third-world country.
Punchy
Since when do kids eat stuff? I thought their role in society was saying inappropriate things at inappropriate times that make me laff cuz I can cuz they’re children.
Nobody said a god damn word about shoving shit down their pie-hole. If they want greens, I’ve got lots of grass in my backyard with their name on it.
kid bitzer
this is why i cannot join the current freak-out over the deficit, yet.
yeah, sure, i hate the growing deficit. i’m so old, i hated it under reagan, too.
but i’m also so old that i grew up with people who had been through the depression. we really, really need to avoid that level of economic devastation.
in a good year, the u.s. economy can crank out, what, 12, 15 trillion gdp?
and in a bad depression, gdp can fall, what 30% or so?
that’s three or four trillion dollars less for the nation as a whole, per year, if we let ourselves slide into a re-do of the big one.
so far, i’m not hurting too bad, and most of the people i know (i.e. middle class or a little richer) aren’t doing too bad either.
the people who are really hurting are on the bottom of the economic and educational ladder. (the people who are bitching loudest are the folks at the top.)
but if we make a sequel to “hoover, the movie”, then we’re all going to be hurting. we’re all going to be in line for food handouts, the way my people were in the ’30s.
Zifnab
Um… guys. Really? Hanging on a lagging indicator much? I know we all enjoy being pessimists, but if you’re looking for “green shoots” economic recovery in school lunch enrollment numbers, you’re really really far down the chain of cause-effect.
jrg
Agreed. The number of free and reduced lunches is probably closely correlated to overall employment, which is a lagging indicator.
But it’s still sad.
jon
To R-Jud,
I was referring to the many other welfare programs available to the poor. Why government help agencies aren’t open during the times poor people would best get to them is a question I can’t answer, but I guess if you’re going to be poor you might as well be unemployed as well since there’s a hell of a lot you can’t do outside of government-worker hours.
geg6
This is just another symptom of our sick, sick, sick economy. An economy that has been run for at least the last 30 years in the exact same manner as a banana republic. Real wages have been stagnant and most people have existed until now on credit. Credit cards, liar loans, payday lenders…whatever it took to make up for every dollar earned being worth less and less. Guess the house of cards held up as long as the financial markets did, but now that the myth of easy credit and endless profit on money shuffling and real estate has been killed, even the middle class is getting killed. My friend who runs a local food bank and soup kitchen tells about people she knows who are working class and who are employed but who can no longer keep up with the task of both feeding and sheltering themselves and their families. And I can’t begin to tell the horror stories I’m hearing from parents as they struggle to figure out a way to fund their children’s college educations. There has not been a day so far during any of our summer freshman orientations that I haven’t had to break the news to a student and his/her family that there is no way for them to afford our price tag. We try hard as a university to provide as much institutional funding as possible, but even our endowments (which as a public aren’t much) have taken a giant hit and aren’t what they should be even if times were good. State aid is cut due to the horrors of the state budget. And federal gift aid is only available to those who are the poorest of the poor and the borrowing limit on federal loans is $5500 for a freshman. As recently as last year, an in-state student living on campus who got the full institutional, state, and federal package had all billing costs covered with a little left for a refund to go toward books and living expenses. This year, I have yet to come across a single student, no matter how poor, for whom that will happen. I despair for these kids. There are poor kids who live within five or six miles of our campus who would have their costs covered if they could just commute. Problem is they cannot afford a car and our county transit authority will not stop anywhere near campus because of budget cutbacks. I really don’t know what these people are expected to do or how anyone expects them to pull themselves out of their situation if they can’t get educated. Hell, based on the tone of the article, they’ll never make it to college at all because they will all be malnourished throughout their childhoods because of the strain being put on free lunch and breakfast programs at their schools. First comes the rationing of college education. Next comes the rationing of food to school age children.
/useless rant
Brian J
This is such a bad thing, but not for the reasons mentioned above. Think of all the money that’s being wasted on a program like this.
I don’t understand why so many kids are getting lunch support anyway. I mean, think about it: most of these kids are probably fat. A little less food will probably do them some good, in the long run, and us as well, since it will probably lower the rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. So what’s the big deal if programs like this are threatened by budget cuts?
Just in case it wasn’t obvious, I was mocking those on the right who are bound to say something heartless about this. Seriously, though, I wish I had something constructive to say about this, but I really don’t.
anonevent
They only reason my being on free lunches as a kid – gaaah, 25 years ago — didn’t suck was because almost everyone else in my school was on them.
@Brian J: I had a coworker tell me that what’s bad about this lunch program is that the kids will start thinking they should get dinner as well, and then what, medical coverage? As someone who was happy to be getting food as a kid, he pissed me off to the point where I couldn’t say anything.
Comrade Dread
How long do you think it will be before some Republican thinks we should eliminate this in order to save us all from government debt?
LD50
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
YellowJournalism
@anonevent: That attitude really pisses me off. Most of those kids are just happy to have a meal. They don’t care about the how or why.
Where I work we have a hot lunch program. Some of the children really try to fill themselves up while they can. I’ve had children ask to eat another child’s unfinished meal before. (No, they aren’t allowed to.)
What’s sad is the rising food costs really take its toll out on the quality of the ingredients and the types of meals the children recieve, especially in areas like fruit and veggies.
gopher2b
Debt and oil are going to kill any decent recovery. I doubt it will get terribly worse (10% unemployment is pretty bad) but we only have a 6-12 month window to get back on track.
kid bitzer
@23–
you know what’s pretty awesome? the magoo version of that. some of jim backus’ line-readings are really inspired.
jcricket
Better make sure the food isn’t too tasty or healthy – that’s some kind of moral hazard and the kids parents will stop looking for work knowing their kids are only mildly humiliated by going to a food bank, rather than also malnourished.
Seriously, I have friends who work for the Seattle JFS (jewish family services). One of their big programs is a food bank (serves more than just jewish people). The demand this year is so high the shelves have been cleaned out, twice, and they’ve had to temporarily turn people away. The combination of the recession, which dropped the endowment and donations 30% (each), along with decreased donations from grocery stores (who now send more of their “leftovers” to places like Grocery Outlet), along with record demand, is a recipe for disaster.
This is my problem – Republicans and Libertarians have no solutions for our real problems, and yet they suck all the air out of the room during a debate, so we’re arguing about whether paid parental leave is “bad” because among the 160 countries that offer it, Cuba is listed. Or when our healthcare system is crumbling to the point that 50 million people are uninsured and a new bankruptcy happens every minute due to unexpected healthcare costs, even amongst the insured, we’re saying “let’s take it slow”, “tort reform”, “what people really need is individual plans” – all because Republicans and Libertarians have a reflexive anti-government stance.
This shit is seriously broken, and if Democrats don’t make people aware of who’s really standing in the way of the real progress we need (it’s mostly Republicans, but also the Ben Nelson’s of this world) it’s our own fault if we get voted out of office again.
gopher2b
I’ve also reached the conclusion that California is too big. Its unmanageable. Any state with an economy the size of a country needs to be a country….or smaller states.
John Hamilton Farr
I’ve been traveling for a week and not reading econoblogs. First impression after dipping back into the stream: things are considerably worse (in outlook) than even a week ago. Just a layman’s impression, gotten from reading between the lines. And then there’s California. The wingnut crazies out there will do their best to destroy the financial system for all of us, apparently. This thing ain’t nowhere done yet.
To think that Obama had THE moment, the perfect historical moment, to restructure the financial system, and instead enabled the continued looting of the Treasury, is just sick-making. I will therefore not bother to think about all this any more and just head for the cliff with my eyes closed like everyone else.
In fact, I just bought a new 24″ iMac, so I feel like I died and went to heaven anyway.
bob h
In California, property taxes are held to unreasonably low levels because of the wondrous Prop 13. Were houses to be taxed at reasonable levels, the schools could provide lunch for the kids without struggling.
When it comes to California, I find it preposterous that they should be sticking their hands out to the Federal government when they have the wherewithal to solve their problems themselves. But presumably we will be hearing soon that our TARP funds have been extended to those clowns.
gopher2b
@John Hamilton Farr:
For what’s worth (not much…its an anecdote), I work in a “leading indicator” industry and most of us agree that business has been steadily picking up the last few months. We are much, much busier than we were back in Jan-Mar. Of course, its only going to get (worse? better?) since 10-15% of the workforce in the industry was fired last fall and winter and we won’t have enough people to do the job.
LD50
Tho of course, the problem is, if we get voted out of office, we’ll be replaced with a party that explicitly states that none of these problems *should* ever be addressed.
So we have a choice between a party that addresses these problems in a half-assed way, and a party that wants to drown them in the bathtub.
tc125231
Re green shoots, see this Krugman post on hours actually worked. By vthat measure, notice that there are no “green shoots”.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/dismal-hours/
tc125231
@LD50:
iluvsummr
@amorphous: Well the kids would be doing their patriotic duty to prevent the slide to socíalism by starving.
Nicholas Kristof has a new article up on healthcare reform. Judging by the comments, people aren’t as gullible about the Harry and Louise style scare tactics this time around.
ETA: I guess adding the accent aigu to socíalism after the fact doesn’t get a post out of moderation.
John Cole
That wasn’t my point at all. My point was that even if the economy is recovering, shit is still terrible for a lot of people and getting worse. In fact, that is the very point of a lagging indicator, isn’t it? When things are getting better, in some areas they are still getting worse. Or, you could say, “lagging.”
Beyond that, I don’t think there are any “green shoots” yet. I’m no economist, but everywhere I look everything seems worse.
Martin
There won’t be any green shoots in CA for some time due to the state budget.
Some highlights from a higher-ed perspective:
– The states CalGrant program will likely be eliminated. On top of that, fees are going up about 10%. That’s going to drive a lot of students out of college and into the job market, driving up the unemployment rate.
– UC alone is facing $860M in permanent budget cuts. K-12 is in the billions, and CalState and community colleges are massive as well. I think the estimate is that if the UC system simply doesn’t open for Fall and keeps everything shut down until Winter (no salary, etc.) that would be just enough to close the budget gap.
– Education in CA hasn’t even begun to seriously deal with layoffs – there are GM-levels of layoffs yet to come. Across the board pay cuts are looking to be in the 10% range, which will push more foreclosures and all that.
Previous to this, I think it was estimated that UCLA receives about 15% of their funding from the state. This will probably drop it near or into the single digits. There’s now some discussion of whether the UC system receives enough support from the state to offset the restrictions put on it – whether the system should just turn private.
Lupin
Kids should not starve when they could be feeding other kids.
Reread Swift.
Don’t they have straws anymore?
REN
@anonevent #21
What else could you do? There’s really no way to deal with someone without compassion. If you told him your story he’d probably start calling you comrade. Then when he gets fired someday for being the dickhead that he is,he’d probably find a way to blame it on you.