Do wrap-around resources, 3 free meals, after-school activities, etc. move the needle?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Caveat: I am one of the few conservatives in MoCo. Yet, I cannot deny a child food when they are hungry. It is a sad reality that there are some recipients of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) that sell their EBT cards "food stamps" for cash to unidentified third-parties or trade the funds for drugs. In cases like these, their children are the ones that end up recieving little-to-no food because their parents are exploiting the system. In other cases, the parents end up using the funds to support new boyfriends/ girlfriends/ family members that are ineligible to apply for their own assistance because they are otherwise disqualified. Again, the children are the ones who end up suffering.

What we need to do is change the law, so that this is not happening at such a great frequency. In 2011, FL enacted their drug testing policy for people applying for assistance. In short, every person that was applying would have to pay for a drug test. If the drug test came back as negative, then the state would refund them the cost of the test with the first assistance payment. If the person tested positive and the applying party had minor dependents, the state would release the funds to a responsible person who could pass a drug test.

Understandably, FL is not a great model for much of anything because Lord knows we all read about the crazy shit that only seems to happen in FL. Yet, they have seen positive results with this policy, which led the way for others to make similar policies in their states. Yet, Maryland is incapable of holding people accountable. They enable the bad choices and bad actions of many residents on assistance. Again, the children are the ones that suffer. So until there is a real change in policy, we are forced to supplement the diets of children.

Is it a little irksome that people are essentially double-dipping into food assistance (getting welfare and children are fed)? Yes. Nevertheless, have you heard a poor child's stomach rumble so loudly because they have not eaten all weekend (besides a bag of Cheetos)? It is heartbreaking. I used to complain at great length about older children in no costume on Halloween, until someone said to me, "maybe they cannot afford a costume and maybe that full-size snickers bar is the only thing they are going to eat until tomorrow when they go to school."

Not only are the children undeniably hungry, but in many cases they do not know when they will eat again. Stress and hunger are two important factors that lead to poor performance in schools, which cause children to fall behind. When children fall behind, they may stop attending or become distracting in general education classrooms (where your own child may be trying to learn how to multiply or diagram a sentence). If they stop attending, then it is likely that other negative consequences will occur, such as pregnancy, making criminal choices, or engaging in other self-harming activity, like experimenting with drugs. The cycle continues and they become that shitty parent unable to take care of their children, which means you have to do that for them. The other option is that they end up in jail and we pay for their food and lodging in prison.

So as a conservative, I am all in favor of giving economically disadvantaged students their meals at school and supplementing the cost of an after-school activity if it dwindles the chances of them becoming a parasite on society for the rest of their natural lives.

Drug testing welfare recipients costs more money than it saves (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/us/no-savings-found-in-florida-welfare-drug-tests.html&ved=2ahUKEwiFs5vXtd7YAhVIJKwKHZGzBSYQFjAEegQIChAB&usg=AOvVaw0YILWHxJm9Ce6MuffMMFSO)

Unfortunately other forms of well for a fraud that you mentioned are harder to investigate. I remember I had a student that showed signs of being underfed I suspected that his mom was selling EBT cards but the school social worker was not interested in investigating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I am sorry, beyond the issue of feeding them at school, anyone who observes children in a situation with parents described above needs to call Child Welfare. It is false compassion to leave kids in these families. It is not punishing people for being poor, it is rescuing a child from an abusive situation. Teachers - you are mandated reporters; get cracking!

Fellow conservative - I am to the point where I think all food aid should be replaced by community meals provided at schools and other community centers. Eat the food that is provided. If it doesn't taste good, get motivated to get a job and buy your own food. This is one place where I don't care if government is the most efficient at providing a service. We should be sustaining life and health.

Lots of people who receive food assistance have jobs. It's just that the jobs don't pay enough to cover the family's food needs.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, we should probably be billing Walmart directly for all the employees who work at Walmart and are on public assistance

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Caveat: I am one of the few conservatives in MoCo. Yet, I cannot deny a child food when they are hungry. It is a sad reality that there are some recipients of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) that sell their EBT cards "food stamps" for cash to unidentified third-parties or trade the funds for drugs. In cases like these, their children are the ones that end up recieving little-to-no food because their parents are exploiting the system. In other cases, the parents end up using the funds to support new boyfriends/ girlfriends/ family members that are ineligible to apply for their own assistance because they are otherwise disqualified. Again, the children are the ones who end up suffering.

What we need to do is change the law, so that this is not happening at such a great frequency. In 2011, FL enacted their drug testing policy for people applying for assistance. In short, every person that was applying would have to pay for a drug test. If the drug test came back as negative, then the state would refund them the cost of the test with the first assistance payment. If the person tested positive and the applying party had minor dependents, the state would release the funds to a responsible person who could pass a drug test.

Understandably, FL is not a great model for much of anything because Lord knows we all read about the crazy shit that only seems to happen in FL. Yet, they have seen positive results with this policy, which led the way for others to make similar policies in their states. Yet, Maryland is incapable of holding people accountable. They enable the bad choices and bad actions of many residents on assistance. Again, the children are the ones that suffer. So until there is a real change in policy, we are forced to supplement the diets of children.

Is it a little irksome that people are essentially double-dipping into food assistance (getting welfare and children are fed)? Yes. Nevertheless, have you heard a poor child's stomach rumble so loudly because they have not eaten all weekend (besides a bag of Cheetos)? It is heartbreaking. I used to complain at great length about older children in no costume on Halloween, until someone said to me, "maybe they cannot afford a costume and maybe that full-size snickers bar is the only thing they are going to eat until tomorrow when they go to school."

Not only are the children undeniably hungry, but in many cases they do not know when they will eat again. Stress and hunger are two important factors that lead to poor performance in schools, which cause children to fall behind. When children fall behind, they may stop attending or become distracting in general education classrooms (where your own child may be trying to learn how to multiply or diagram a sentence). If they stop attending, then it is likely that other negative consequences will occur, such as pregnancy, making criminal choices, or engaging in other self-harming activity, like experimenting with drugs. The cycle continues and they become that shitty parent unable to take care of their children, which means you have to do that for them. The other option is that they end up in jail and we pay for their food and lodging in prison.

So as a conservative, I am all in favor of giving economically disadvantaged students their meals at school and supplementing the cost of an after-school activity if it dwindles the chances of them becoming a parasite on society for the rest of their natural lives.

Drug testing welfare recipients costs more money than it saves (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/us/no-savings-found-in-florida-welfare-drug-tests.html&ved=2ahUKEwiFs5vXtd7YAhVIJKwKHZGzBSYQFjAEegQIChAB&usg=AOvVaw0YILWHxJm9Ce6MuffMMFSO)

Unfortunately other forms of well for a fraud that you mentioned are harder to investigate. I remember I had a student that showed signs of being underfed I suspected that his mom was selling EBT cards but the school social worker was not interested in investigating.

Its unethical to drug test without providing treatment services. If you want to drug test fine, but provide treatment services as well as child care and transportation for those required to attend. Why test if you aren't going to actually help people.

Very few people sell their EBT cards. Yes, some do but many others don't.

[Anonymous]

Cite please

[Anonymous]

This is anecdotal, but I was a hungry kid who got free lunch. It took my mom a while to get her act together to submit the paperwork necessary for me to get the free lunch, so prior to that I would talk my friends into letting me use a “punch” on their meal card, and I’m also sad to admit that on days I couldn’t figure out where to get food, I would steal it when the lunch lady turned her back. I still feel really bad about that, but it is what it is- hungry kids make bad decisions, and I didn’t realize that if I had just asked for help, I might have gotten it.

Now I have a masters degree and a fancy job and a HHI of around $400k. I think free lunch and breakfast helped me because it eliminated the constant scheming about how to get food. I could go to school, focus on academics, and get a lunch like a normal kid. I had to go in a bit early for the breakfast and getting it labeled me, to my embarrassment, as a kid in poverty because only the poorest qualified for free breakfast. But I am so grateful to all who support free lunch because I’m not sure where I would be without it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It doesn't matter. We've gutted social services, and now it's up to the schools to keep poor kids fed, safe, and out of the cold, and up to the jails to care for the addicted and mentally ill.

If we funded those services, maybe we could stop pouring endless money into schools that has no direct application to education. Yes, I get it that you can't learn if you're hungry, but feeding people is at least one step removed from the central point of a school.

Says who? I think the point of free, mandatory education has never really been as much about education as other things. And schools have in the past taken on other roles, including providing food.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, we should probably be billing Walmart directly for all the employees who work at Walmart and are on public assistance

+1

Instead we are lowering the corporate tax rate, while allowing corporations to keep their employees just below 40 hours a week and just below a living wage. If Wal Mart and other big employers stepped everyone who wanted a full-time job up to 40 hours a week, and provided benefits, it would relieve a massive strain on our social safety net.

[Anonymous]

What we need to do is change the law, so that this is not happening at such a great frequency. In 2011, FL enacted their drug testing policy for people applying for assistance. In short, every person that was applying would have to pay for a drug test. If the drug test came back as negative, then the state would refund them the cost of the test with the first assistance payment. If the person tested positive and the applying party had minor dependents, the state would release the funds to a responsible person who could pass a drug test.

They also had to stop doing it because the courts found it unconstitutional, and because the pilot found that the rate of positives was incredibly low compared to the cost of drug testing everyone. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/us/politics/florida-drug-testing-law-is-dropped.html

In fact, research has shown that welfare recipients use drugs at a LOWER rate than the general population.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I am sorry, beyond the issue of feeding them at school, anyone who observes children in a situation with parents described above needs to call Child Welfare. It is false compassion to leave kids in these families. It is not punishing people for being poor, it is rescuing a child from an abusive situation. Teachers - you are mandated reporters; get cracking!

Fellow conservative - I am to the point where I think all food aid should be replaced by community meals provided at schools and other community centers. Eat the food that is provided. If it doesn't taste good, get motivated to get a job and buy your own food. This is one place where I don't care if government is the most efficient at providing a service. We should be sustaining life and health.

Lots of people who receive food assistance have jobs. It's just that the jobs don't pay enough to cover the family's food needs.

We talked about this upthread. No one begrudges real needs (although if they are working and receive both food stamps AND the Earned Income Tax Credit and still don't have enough to cover their kid's breakfast, there are some other problems there.) People living this close to their budget need to move to lower cost areas. Let's let the marketplace work. If the government doesn't subsidize these low wage lifestyles, and low skilled workers move out further, etc. and cause a shortage, then wages will rise. But if the government keeps padding things and drawing people here, it eliminates wage growth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So am I right that the question is "should we feed hungry children if it doesn't increase their test scores?"

Exactly. It actually blows OPs mind that kids would be fed at the place where they spend approximately 50% of their waking hours.
Wow. The question is absurd. It moves the needle when it comes to starving children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I am sorry, beyond the issue of feeding them at school, anyone who observes children in a situation with parents described above needs to call Child Welfare. It is false compassion to leave kids in these families. It is not punishing people for being poor, it is rescuing a child from an abusive situation. Teachers - you are mandated reporters; get cracking!

Fellow conservative - I am to the point where I think all food aid should be replaced by community meals provided at schools and other community centers. Eat the food that is provided. If it doesn't taste good, get motivated to get a job and buy your own food. This is one place where I don't care if government is the most efficient at providing a service. We should be sustaining life and health.

Lots of people who receive food assistance have jobs. It's just that the jobs don't pay enough to cover the family's food needs.

We talked about this upthread. No one begrudges real needs (although if they are working and receive both food stamps AND the Earned Income Tax Credit and still don't have enough to cover their kid's breakfast, there are some other problems there.) People living this close to their budget need to move to lower cost areas. Let's let the marketplace work. If the government doesn't subsidize these low wage lifestyles, and low skilled workers move out further, etc. and cause a shortage, then wages will rise. But if the government keeps padding things and drawing people here, it eliminates wage growth.

Have you ever BEEN poor? I mean really poor? The trade-offs you are suggesting just aren't reasonable for poor families. Yes, they could move to lower-cost areas. Then what? Lower-cost areas lack public transit and folks living in poverty often lack reliable transportation. So then you have someone with unreliable transportation living in the boonies, and likely working 2-3 jobs that are far from one another. Not to mention that living further out raises childcare costs and pushes families beyond the hours that most providers will cover. Finally, breaking up informal safety nets like family and neighbors also impacts the ability to hold a job. If a shift worker can't get someone to cover childcare during an unexpected shift, because they've been displaced from their community, they'll lose that shift job.

[Anonymous]

Feeding kids is fine with me; food has always been part of what schools do.

But clothes, food sent home, parent classes, etc., etc., unless they are coming out of a different social services budget, and use separate staff, but just happen to be housed at the school as a convenient place to contact the parents? Nope. I'd like to see that go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is anecdotal, but I was a hungry kid who got free lunch. It took my mom a while to get her act together to submit the paperwork necessary for me to get the free lunch, so prior to that I would talk my friends into letting me use a “punch” on their meal card, and I’m also sad to admit that on days I couldn’t figure out where to get food, I would steal it when the lunch lady turned her back. I still feel really bad about that, but it is what it is- hungry kids make bad decisions, and I didn’t realize that if I had just asked for help, I might have gotten it.

Now I have a masters degree and a fancy job and a HHI of around $400k. I think free lunch and breakfast helped me because it eliminated the constant scheming about how to get food. I could go to school, focus on academics, and get a lunch like a normal kid. I had to go in a bit early for the breakfast and getting it labeled me, to my embarrassment, as a kid in poverty because only the poorest qualified for free breakfast. But I am so grateful to all who support free lunch because I’m not sure where I would be without it.

Thank you for sharing your story. You have proven that these services can help and you make a very valid point.
My child gets to go to school and focus on school, he doesn't have to worry about where his next meal is coming from. He doesn't have to worry about whether he will be cold at recess or going home b/c he doesn't have weather appropriate clothing.
He doesn't have to worry about if there will be heat at home. He doesn't have to worry about going to bed hungry.

These are very adult issues and kids shouldn't have to worry about them.

For those who are against providing these services in school, do you think they the hallways will be paved with gold once if the schools stop feeding kids?
I just don't understand how anyone could see this as a waste of resources.

As for after school activities, keeping kids engaged is a great way to help at risk kids. Giving them somewhere to be and something to learn outside of school limits the time they could be engage is less than ideal activities and helps give them a sense of community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is anecdotal, but I was a hungry kid who got free lunch. It took my mom a while to get her act together to submit the paperwork necessary for me to get the free lunch, so prior to that I would talk my friends into letting me use a “punch” on their meal card, and I’m also sad to admit that on days I couldn’t figure out where to get food, I would steal it when the lunch lady turned her back. I still feel really bad about that, but it is what it is- hungry kids make bad decisions, and I didn’t realize that if I had just asked for help, I might have gotten it.

Now I have a masters degree and a fancy job and a HHI of around $400k. I think free lunch and breakfast helped me because it eliminated the constant scheming about how to get food. I could go to school, focus on academics, and get a lunch like a normal kid. I had to go in a bit early for the breakfast and getting it labeled me, to my embarrassment, as a kid in poverty because only the poorest qualified for free breakfast. But I am so grateful to all who support free lunch because I’m not sure where I would be without it.

That is a wonderful story, thank you for sharing.

The part that I bolded, that is psychology 101, Maslow's hierarchy of need. Children cannot focus on learning and growing as a person when they are worried about how to get food.