Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I think a county should not have 1/3 of their students on free and reduced lunch. Why is this? More poor people coming across the border? Why can't families afford food for their kids? I came from a very middle class background where people's parents worked a manual labor jobs and don't remember any of this.
Fairfax has some generational poverty, especially along the Route 1 corridor, but the spike in FARMS rates in Fairfax is overwhelmingly due to immigrants. These people often take the jobs that no one else wants, but in many cases they are still eligible for public assistance like FARMS.
FARMS eligibility in FCPS is currently based on incomes below 130% of the poverty level. If you reduced the defined poverty level, or set FARMS eligibility at a lower threshold (i.e., below the poverty level vs. below 130% threshold), you wouldn't have 1/3 of the students receiving FARMS but you might also have more kids who are food-insecure and local employers might find it even more difficult to fill low-paying jobs.
The existence of the program is just further evidence, however, that the county already spends more per student for lower-income students, and there are many other ways in which FCPS spends more on schools with higher percentages of low-income kids. The equity consultants pushing "equal outcomes" as if disproportionate spending to benefit lower-income kids is some new idea they came up with on their own are basically just hired to give School Board representatives in the poorer FCPS districts (Franconia, Mason, and Mount Vernon, in particular) more ammunition to demand a further reallocation of resources and opportunities away from the wealthier districts towards theirs.
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