The Democrat Utopia

[RedDenver]

2 minutes ago, JJ Husker said:

I know that. But where does it end? There are numerous societal issues that negatively affect learning. Should the education system be responsible for assuring proper parenting, giving students and/or their parents jobs, clothing, healthcare, vision, dental,  providing reliable housing, etc?

 

I’ve just always had this nagging feeling that our schools could do a much better, more efficient job of educating if they could focus on teaching.  Hunger and food and poverty and family problems seems like they should be unrelated issues to me. Maybe I’m weird….

We're talking about feeding kids lunch during the school day while they are at school. It costs less and is more effective than almost anything else we could do. Seems like it should be a very easy and non-controversial decision to me at least.

[JJ Husker]

2 hours ago, RedDenver said:

We're talking about feeding kids lunch during the school day while they are at school. It costs less and is more effective than almost anything else we could do. Seems like it should be a very easy and non-controversial decision to me at least.

I’m not disagreeing with that aspect. Logistically it makes sense. Where it starts to lose me is when the schools request $2M for education and that’s the extent of what the public knows about where their tax dollars went. We think it went for education but how much really went to feed kids? It’s not a transparent system. 
 

I guarantee you that Cherry Hills or Highlands Ranch is spending way more on education and less on free meals than Greeley does. Yet all the public ever sees is the total expenditure and they wonder why it’s more difficult to get the same end product out of the ed systems. Id like it to be more transparent and not saddle the education budgets with huge variances in lunch expenses.

[BigRedBuster]

13 minutes ago, JJ Husker said:

I’m not disagreeing with that aspect. Logistically it makes sense. Where it starts to lose me is when the schools request $2M for education and that’s the extent of what the public knows about where their tax dollars went. We think it went for education but how much really went to feed kids? It’s not a transparent system. 
 

I guarantee you that Cherry Hills or Highlands Ranch is spending way more on education and less on free meals than Greeley does. Yet all the public ever sees is the total expenditure and they wonder why it’s more difficult to get the same end product out of the ed systems. Id like it to be more transparent and not saddle the education budgets with huge variances in lunch expenses.

So, your solution would be for everything to be transparent and if Greeley has way more kids living in poverty, they still shouldn't spend more on meals for those kids.

[JJ Husker]

3 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

So, your solution would be for everything to be transparent and if Greeley has way more kids living in poverty, they still shouldn't spend more on meals for those kids.

No. Im saying the money to feed them should come from another source. Its pretty simple in my mind. Schools get and spend X dollars to educate. That way all kids get the same learning opportunity. Then the dollars to feed the ones who need it comes from the federal government instead of from school districts.

 

Is this really blowing you guy’s minds? There are much worse off areas than Greeley. What about some of the inner city schools? I don’t understand why one school district should have to spend 50% of their education budget feeding kids while another spends next to nothing on it. Doesn’t that seem a bit crazy? Why do you think a higher percentage of kids from wealthy areas go on to college and are more educated than poorer areas? Do you guys want to keep the poor folk less educated?

[knapplc]

26 minutes ago, JJ Husker said:

Is this really blowing you guy’s minds?

 

Yes. This is one of the more unusual hills anyone's planted a flag on during the decade plus I've been a regular in P&R.

 

 

[JJ Husker]

23 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

Yes. This is one of the more unusual hills anyone's planted a flag on during the decade plus I've been a regular in P&R.

 

 

Good for you.

[knapplc]

2 hours ago, JJ Husker said:

Good for you.

 

And you!

[Archy1221]

7 hours ago, JJ Husker said:

I’m not disagreeing with that aspect. Logistically it makes sense. Where it starts to lose me is when the schools request $2M for education and that’s the extent of what the public knows about where their tax dollars went. We think it went for education but how much really went to feed kids? It’s not a transparent system. 
 

I guarantee you that Cherry Hills or Highlands Ranch is spending way more on education and less on free meals than Greeley does. Yet all the public ever sees is the total expenditure and they wonder why it’s more difficult to get the same end product out of the ed systems. Id like it to be more transparent and not saddle the education budgets with huge variances in lunch expenses.

My kids school district is equivalent to Highlands Ranch or Cherry Hills and they gave out free lunch and breakfast to every single child in school year 2020/2021.  
 

97% of those kids probably had zero need for it and those dollars could have went to something else.  I’m guessing this is the kind of waste that JJ is talking about. 

[JJ Husker]

1 hour ago, Archy1221 said:

My kids school district is equivalent to Highlands Ranch or Cherry Hills and they gave out free lunch and breakfast to every single child in school year 2020/2021.  
 

97% of those kids probably had zero need for it and those dollars could have went to something else.  I’m guessing this is the kind of waste that JJ is talking about. 

Actually that is not what I was getting at. But yes, it would seem to be a waste of education dollars to feed kids who would have no troubles eating properly.

 

What bothers me is the disparity between the haves and have nots. It doesn’t seem fair to expect a poor district to spend more per capita on food and then also bust their chops over the education services they provide. AFAIK, in Colorado, the state pays each district a set amount per student and then the district is supposed to educate the kids. Now if district A has 60% of kids on free lunches and district B only has 10% on free lunches, guess which district is able to provide a better education.

 

I think it would be more equitable to use the education dollars for, you know, education and to have another source of funding for the food. All the kids still get to eat in the schools but they also all would have the same resources for learning. It’s not a hill I’m dying on. It just seems to make more sense than saying give me $10 for education and then spending $5 of it on food in one district and only $1 in another.

 

BTW- In Greeley, a few of the schools serve free breakfast and lunch year round, even when school is out, so the poor kids can eat. I don’t have a problem with that at all. But it all gets classified as education expense. That seems crazy to me.

[RedDenver]

1 hour ago, JJ Husker said:

Actually that is not what I was getting at. But yes, it would seem to be a waste of education dollars to feed kids who would have no troubles eating properly.

 

What bothers me is the disparity between the haves and have nots. It doesn’t seem fair to expect a poor district to spend more per capita on food and then also bust their chops over the education services they provide. AFAIK, in Colorado, the state pays each district a set amount per student and then the district is supposed to educate the kids. Now if district A has 60% of kids on free lunches and district B only has 10% on free lunches, guess which district is able to provide a better education.

 

I think it would be more equitable to use the education dollars for, you know, education and to have another source of funding for the food. All the kids still get to eat in the schools but they also all would have the same resources for learning. It’s not a hill I’m dying on. It just seems to make more sense than saying give me $10 for education and then spending $5 of it on food in one district and only $1 in another.

 

BTW- In Greeley, a few of the schools serve free breakfast and lunch year round, even when school is out, so the poor kids can eat. I don’t have a problem with that at all. But it all gets classified as education expense. That seems crazy to me.

I agree with your general premise that the money should come from somewhere else instead of depleting the poorest areas of money for education. However, the school lunch program has been mired in political tug-of-war for decades and it's not getting solved. What are the schools supposed to do when the best way they can spend their money to educate kids is to feed them?

[Archy1221]

Seems about right 

[JJ Husker]

7 hours ago, RedDenver said:

I agree with your general premise that the money should come from somewhere else instead of depleting the poorest areas of money for education. However, the school lunch program has been mired in political tug-of-war for decades and it's not getting solved. What are the schools supposed to do when the best way they can spend their money to educate kids is to feed them?

I was not aware that the school lunch program has been involved in any  political tug of war or that it is some sort of unsolvable problem.   All I’m asking for is more transparency and some common sense on where the money for lunches comes from. That shouldn’t be controversial or partisan but it would involve using some common sense and I guess we’ve seen that to be in short supply with some of the responses to my posts on the subject.

[knapplc]

1 hour ago, JJ Husker said:

All I’m asking for is more transparency and some common sense on where the money for lunches comes from. That shouldn’t be controversial or partisan but it would involve using some common sense and I guess we’ve seen that to be in short supply with some of the responses to my posts on the subject.

 

What has your research showed you so far? Where does the money come from?

[RedDenver]

1 hour ago, JJ Husker said:

I was not aware that the school lunch program has been involved in any  political tug of war or that it is some sort of unsolvable problem.   All I’m asking for is more transparency and some common sense on where the money for lunches comes from. That shouldn’t be controversial or partisan but it would involve using some common sense and I guess we’ve seen that to be in short supply with some of the responses to my posts on the subject.

https://time.com/4496771/school-lunch-history/

 

Nobody is disagreeing with you about transparency. I'm agreeing with your general premise but pointing out that common sense has not prevailed as regards school lunch funding, so the schools had to take matters into their own hands.

[JJ Husker]

12 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

What has your research showed you so far? Where does the money come from?

That is a fair point. I very well may be going on about nothing. Maybe they are getting subsidized at some point that doesn’t make it obvious. But as a taxpayer and a person who had two kids in the public school system for about an 18 year period, I can tell you unequivocally that it is not made clear by looking at the school budget. And when they do stoop to offering excuses, without fail, the issue that always comes up is the high number and expense of free and reduced lunches. That leads me to believe that at least some of those dollars could be used for education expenses rather than food.

 

Just because I brought it up doesn’t mean it’s really on my radar anymore. I won’t be delving deeper and doing exhaustive research. I just thought it was something worth mentioning or discussing.