Progressives Pass Laws Against ‘Lunch Shaming,’ Leave Local Taxpayers to Pick Up the Tab

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and thanks to progressive Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic-controlled legislature, California taxpayers are about to re-learn that lesson.

The hard way.

Last week California became one of a handful of states to pass a “no-lunch-shaming” law, barring local schools from limiting the meal selection of students with large, outstanding lunch debts. While their classmates cruised the cafeteria buffet line, these students were either limited to a basic, no-frills lunch or given a cold meal, like a sunbutter-and-jelly sandwich, fruit, and milk.

(What happened to peanut butter, you ask? Please. This is 2019.)

When Gov. Newsom signed the anti-lunch-shaming bill into law, he thanked a Napa County elementary school student named Ryan Kyote for “calling national attention to how kids at his school were shamed and singled out” by being given “a cheaper, ‘alternative’ lunch that causes them to stick out.”

Not anymore, Newsom said. California has “outlawed that practice…ensuring all students a state-funded meal of their choice.”

And as a result, the state is about to start funding a lot more meals.

The real issue isn’t student dining. It’s the debt.  According to the School Nutrition Association, 75 percent of school systems reported an outstanding debt for unpaid lunch bills last year. And while the average debt of $3,400 per school system is modest, it ranges wildly from district to district. Some have debts in excess of $800,000, and many of the districts with lunch debt in the low six figures are small and rural, with minimal budgets to begin with.

What do these lunch shaming bills do to address that problem? “Nothing,” said Katie Hanzlik, communications director for California state Senate Majority Leader Bob Hertzberg.

Hertzberg was the prime sponsor of the bill and his spokesperson told InsideSources, “this law changes nothing about payment structures or retrieving unpaid bills.  It just changed the policy in the cafeteria.”

As for the impact of debt on local school districts? “That wasn’t the spirit of the bill. It was just to make sure children don’t go hungry.”

Except that children aren’t going hungry. Kids from low-income families don’t get a “shamed” lunch. They eat with everyone else, thanks to the generosity of the American taxpayer. The federal government already pays $14 billion a year to give free lunches to more than 20 million students every school day. And another 2 million or so kids get nearly-free lunches (students pay 40 cents).

The millions in annual unpaid lunch bills appear to come from families who are by and large financially able to pay, but simply decline to do so. One data point backing that theory is the overall trend of lunch debt since 2012. Seven years ago, the unemployment rate was double today’s and household incomes were lower. Today, incomes are up and more moms and dads are working, but the average lunch debt per district has risen by around 70 percent.

More proof this is about parents and not the ability to pay? States and municipalities who’ve passed similar no-shaming policies have seen their lunch debt soar.

When the Washington state House of Representatives passed the “Hunger-Free Students’ Bill of Rights” in 2018, lead sponsor Rep. Strom Peterson declared, “We have the opportunity to make sure that our school districts are not stigmatizing kids, and that our state’s students are getting the nutrition they need to succeed in school.”

Less than two years later, the state’s local school districts are struggling to cover the costs of the surge in demand for “free” lunches from parents who aren’t paying. Two years ago, Evergreen Public Schools had an unpaid lunch debt of $6,500. Now it’s $85,000. In September, Takoma started the school year with about $130,000 in lunch debt. And down the road in Denver, Colo., public schools adopted the policy and lunch debt jumped from $13,000 to $356,000 in a single year.

In Pennsylvania, their 2017 anti-shaming law inspired an “exponential increase” in the size of lunch debt, and the skyrocketing costs forced the state to amend it. ‘Alternate’ meals are back.

What makes California politicians think their results will be any different?

The SNA’s Diane Pratt-Heavner says her concern is for the families on the economic borderline. “I know 40 cents doesn’t sound like much, but if you have three or four kids, five days a week, and you’re struggling to pay the rest of your bills, it adds up,” she told InsideSources.  However, she also acknowledges that a significant amount of the problem comes from parents who just don’t pay.

She’s also frustrated that schools attempting to make reasonable, good-faith efforts to both feed students and collect the revenue they need are being accused of “shaming,” which Pratt-Heavner says isn’t true. “Our members are actually working very hard to avoid the ‘shame’ aspect while also controlling food costs. People don’t realize that in most districts the food services system is supposed to be self-sufficient, not part of the general budget. They have to find a way to feed these children with the resources they have.”

Taxpayers are simply frustrated.

“What’s up with these parents, can’t they take a minute to make their kids a sack lunch?” asks Rick Futrell, a retired Vancouver, Wash. paramedic who had six kids go through area schools and whose local district is now more than $50,000 in debt.

“It seems like the parents just don’t care, and now everybody else has to pay.”

SOURCE 






Teachers Strike in Chicago Getting Personal as Mayor Says 'There's No More Money. Period.'

An attorney representing Chicago Public Schools made a small request of union leaders who are trying to negotiate an end to the three day old strike: Spend more time negotiating and less time marching in the streets.

That brought an outraged response from union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates: “Rich white men tell black women with children in the Chicago Public Schools what to do all the time."

The lawyer, of course was making a suggestion, not trying to tell anyone what to do. But how else can the radical teachers union get all these white people to shut up and hand over the money if they don't accuse them of being racist?

The union is winning and they know it. That's why they are being relentless in their demands for more, more, and more of everything.

Chicago Tribune:

Chicago teachers union negotiations are heading into the weekend after the second day of a teachers strike ended without a contract deal.

Once again, union officials pointed to progress — particularly in getting a written counterproposal on one of their major concerns, getting more nurses, librarians, social workers, special education case managers and bilingual teachers into schools.
The city has offered to hire 250 more school nurses.

The union wants a nurse in all 520 schools. More than that, the union is demanding that new teachers and the 16,000 homeless students in the system get access to public housing. They also want smaller class sizes, more guidance counselors, more librarians, more, more, more...

Apparently, the union leaders don't read the newspapers. The city already has a budget crisis.

On Wednesday the mayor is scheduled to unveil next year’s budget and explain how City Hall will close an $838 million hole. Chicago, city of government largesse and weak will, has confronted big budget gaps before and managed them badly. Often the city has masked overspending by borrowing more money. It has raised property taxes, and still the budget hole has grown due to a massive shortfall in the pension funds for city workers, including police and firefighters.

In August Lightfoot said she “rejected” the familiar approaches of another historically large property tax increase, large-scale borrowing and short-changing city pension funds. On Wednesday, we’ll all see what she actually proposes. The fact is, about $280 million of the budget gap is attributable to a mandated additional payment into the police and fire funds — a strong-arming of the city into meeting its obligations.

If Chicago had been responsible instead of overspending while skimping on pension fund contributions, it wouldn’t be in this mess. So how is she going to close the budget gap, fully fund the pensions, and pay the teachers' union extortion all at the same time?

WGN:

"The teachers’ demands are unaffordable,” said Adam Schuster, with the Illinois Policy Institute. "They’re out of line with economic reality and they’re out of line with what the tax base can afford.”

To meet CTU’s demands, the Illinois Policy Institute said the typical Chicago homeowner’s property tax bill would rise by at least $235, while Mayor Lightfoot’s offer would add $13 to the bill.

Mayor Lightfoot said if she agrees to everything the teachers want it would cost $2.5 billion per year. "That would double the cost of the CTU contract agreeing to an extra $2.5 billion in cost would be completely irresponsible,” Mayor Lightfoot said.

There is absolutely no money to be had -- not in the city or the state. It is a remarkable exercise in clout to see the teachers' union put a gun to the head of the city and hold it up for money it doesn't have who will get it from taxpayers who can't afford it.

SOURCE 





Don’t Blame For-Profit Colleges for Debt among Black Students

The accusations don’t stand up to even simple scrutiny.
For-profit colleges take the blame for a lot of bad trends in our higher-education system. Sometimes it’s deserved. But too frequently the blame is driven by ideology and not objective analysis. And lest we assume that the blue-chip think tanks, the ones full of top-notch academics, are above this for-profit college-bashing, that is not what was on display last week at the Brookings Institution.

At an event titled “Student Loans: A Look at the Evidence,” one panelist blamed high debt burdens among black students on — you guessed it — for-profit colleges. This is not the first time we’ve seen this argument. The same claim appeared as the title of a Hechinger Institute article earlier this year. The reasoning behind the claim is that black students are more likely to attend for-profit colleges than their peers (true), and student debt is higher at for-profits than at other colleges (often true).

The problem with this argument is that it is based on reasoning alone. It tells us nothing of the magnitude of the effect of for-profit colleges on debt burdens among black students. What is needed for that task are data. And in this case the data do not show that for-profit college enrollment is a meaningful factor in explaining relatively high debt among black students.

The simplest way to see this is to compare the average debt for black college students based on whether for-profit graduates are included in the analysis. If the average debt among black students goes down when students from for-profits are excluded, then for-profit colleges are a factor contributing to black students’ relatively high debt. That is the effect we would expect to see based on the claim at the Brookings event and in the Hechinger Institute article.

The data cited in the Hechinger Institute article are publicly available through the National Center for Education Statistics, so we can conduct this simple test. The results are shown in the table below and feature three different groups of black students from the 2015–16 academic year: those who completed any type of undergraduate credential (certificate, associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree); those who completed a bachelor’s degree; and those who completed a graduate or professional degree. The figures reflect average cumulative borrowing for the entire cohort across borrowers and non-borrowers.

For all three groups, the data show that average debt does indeed decline when students at for-profits are excluded. But it is only by about $1,000 at most. That is probably a much smaller effect than one would expect having read articles or attended events blaming for-profit colleges for high student debt among black students. And it is hardly worthy of a headline.

The effect of for-profit enrollment on black student debt is unexpectedly small because many black students attend private non-profit colleges where debt levels are comparable to those of students attending for-profits. Black students also tend to borrow more than their peers no matter what type of higher-education institution they attend. Therefore, black students earning degrees at for-profit colleges can have only a small effect on the overall debt levels of black graduates. Or to put a number on it, about an overall average of $1,000.

But are the experts who say it is “a factor” still technically correct, given that for-profit enrollment results in higher overall debt levels among black students, even if it is only about $1,000? Not really, at least not by the test presented here.

The data used to make the claim are taken from a survey, so there is sampling error. It turns out that the roughly $1,000 differences in the debt levels cited above are well within the margin of error for these survey data. The differences in debt are not statistically significant.

In short, the claim that for-profit colleges are a noteworthy factor for explaining high debt among black students doesn’t stand up even to simple scrutiny. There is a pattern here.

None of this is to say that the relatively high debt burdens among black students is not a serious problem. On the contrary. The issue demands serious solutions. Blaming for-profit colleges is not one of them.

SOURCE