Reading, Writing, and A Reuben

Katy Grimes: Reading, Writing and a Reuben sandwich is now part of the California public school curriculum, because dinner is served.

Better than your own butler or personal chef, public school kids are getting three squares a day at school, but are flunking basic math, and English-as-a-second-language.

Who needs a mommy when there is a public school down the street?

Hungry Kids Can’t Learn

The only institutions that serve three meals a day are prisons and military barracks. While America’s public schools may look like prisons, hunger as a criminal offense seems to be catching on.

Government officials love to repeat the phrase, “hungry kids can’t learn.” There are even government programs with this title.  Picking up the banner, President Barack Obama signed into law the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which authorizes funding and sets policy for some of the USDA’s child nutrition programs: the National School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), the Summer Food Service Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program.

According to the state Department of Education, 228 California schools are already participating in the new program.

“This is an historic victory for our nation’s youngsters,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said when Obama signed the law in December 2010. But what was deemed historic for children, is also historic for parents. With public schools providing all of the resources of boarding schools, prisons and barracks, why would children ever need to leave?

And, America’s children are becoming conditioned to expect that everything in life is provided by the government.

Advocates of the additional government-school meal say that the dinner is important to “curb hunger in kids” who use the after-school day care.

The USDA now oversees the school breakfast program, lunch program, snack program, Summer Meal program, Child and Adult Care meal program, special milk program, and now the school dinner program. What’s next – the personal chef program? What about vegan kids – don’t vegan kids count?

It’s A Crime To Be Hungry

The First Lady, Michelle Obama, is on a mission to curb childhood obesity. And the way to do it, according to the Obama administration, is to feed kids more meals at school. Kids are either overweight, or they are starving – which is it?

In America, it is now a crime to be hungry. Judging by the girth of today’s school children, far more emphasis is put on hunger and food consumption than on exercise or overall health.

My son used after-school day care programs throughout elementary school. But we got up early enough to eat breakfast at home, we packed his lunch, and included enough food to get him through the day until I picked him up.  And sometimes he was hungry.

Now kids go to school, get fed three meals a day, have an after-school babysitter, and want for nothing.

Double-Dipping Obama Style

What doesn’t make sense about the government provided school meals, is that the program states the meals are for students who qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches. Aren’t their parents already receiving money from the government for food? Those who qualify for free and reduced-price lunches are on government assistance and receive food stamps.

Adding a dinner meal at school, for children whose parents qualify for government assistance, is double-dipping. Double dipping is already a big problem in government employment. With public schools getting into the game, the double-dipping is more insidious, and harder to track. Obama signed one more giant entitlement into law, when he signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

Follow The Money Motive

The motive for these additional school meals is not to feed hungry children. There are already many government programs for hungry Americans. The motive is to create a need for additional school employees. With dinner now on the school menu, school cafeterias will need more staff. And those cafeteria employees are members of the Service Employees International Union.

“A more robust expansion of school lunch, breakfast, summer feeding, child care and WIC (the federal Women, Infants and Children nutrition program) is critical to reducing hunger, ending childhood obesity and providing fair wages and healthcare for front line food service workers (emphasis added),” SEIU Executive Vice President Mitch Ackerman said, reported Michelle Malkin in February 2010.

“There are 400,000 workers who prepare and serve lunch to American schoolchildren. SEIU represents tens of thousands of those workers and is trying to unionize many more. ‘More robust expansion’ of the federal school-lunch law means a mandate for higher wages, increased benefits and government-guaranteed health insurance coverage,” Malkin wrote.

It’s never really about the children, but they are a very convenient prop.

The federal government already spends $15 billion a year on nutrition in public schools.  One-third of the children and teens in America are now overweight or obese – it is a growing health problem, and is only going to get worse. With more government spending on school meals, and more people expecting entitlements from the government, America’s sheeple are thriving.

FEB. 23, 2012