Reply to "Free lunch for all" coming back to some schools?

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to ""Free lunch for all" coming back to some schools?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There was a similar thread when MCPS discontinued universal free lunches.  Here is a link to that thread, as well as my thoughts on the subject, which I originally posted on that other thread.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/legacy/posts/list/75/1065889.page

Really? Six pages and nobody’s quoted TANSTAAFL yet? Compared to the rest of my family, I don’t really qualify as a geek. I can’t believe I’m the only one who made this connection.

Seriously, though, I agree with the sentiment “There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.”. While I absolutely agree we need to help those who need help and that no child in our county should go hungry, everything has an opportunity cost. The more we spend on free lunches, the less we can spend on other worthy causes, at least without increasing debt, which will eventually have its own consequences. I am fully capable of paying my children’s lunches. Sometimes they packed a lunch and other times they purchased the school lunch which, however poor the quality, was not terribly expensive to begin with. Moreover, while our family was comfortable, we’re nowhere near the high income end of Montgomery County, much less DCUM. I’m happy for MCPS to provide free lunches to lower income families and to set a higher qualifying income standard to cover more kids. I find it totally unnecessary, wasteful, and practically obscene to give charity to people who don’t need it when it could be used to help those who do.[/quote]

I agree.  There are limited funds.

MCPS should (and does) provide free lunch to those who need it.  It’s wasteful to provide free lunch to everyone.  And it also lowers the quality of the lunches.[/quote]

Yup![/quote]

But not tho. [b]The universal free breakfast was instituted because it was cheaper to provide it for all students than the pay the administrative costs of sorting out who qualified and distributing it only to them.[/b] And students who qualified were also not going to get the breakfast because of the stigma. So by providing it to all, costs were lowered and more kids who needed it got breakfast, which is the goal anyway.

Teaching summer school, the school lunches have been ok actually. I've eaten it every day and it's not gourmet and I could pack a better lunch from home, but for a free meal that I didn't have to make, it's fine. We've had baked chicken nuggets, sliders, grilled cheese, chicken patty, hot ham and cheese, and of course pizza. Again, not anything I'd call delicious, but it's ok. My biggest complaint is that the produce is gross. We've had peaches a bunch of days, but they're hard as a rock. If they were ripe, the kids would eat them.[/quote]

No.  That is not true.  It is not cheaper to provide free lunch to every single MCPS student than it is to provide free lunch only to the students who need it.  [/quote]

This thread is about universal free meals in SOME schools now. Basically where there are so many students who qualify, it's cheaper to provide for all the students AT THAT SCHOOL than to sort out who qualifies. Nobody suggested it's cheaper to provide free lunch for "every single MCPS student."[/quote]

This is accurate. The practice also pre-dates covid by many years. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics