9486 in the collection
USDA to kill Phila. school lunch program
Taking food out of the mouths
of babes.
By Alfred Lubrano
A highly regarded Philadelphia schools
breakfast-and-lunch program - the only one of
its kind in the United States - is being
terminated by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture.
The 17-year-old program aimed at poor students
is unique because it doesn't require students
and their families to fill out application
forms for free or reduced-price meals. This
maximizes student participation.
The USDA said it needed the applications to
better monitor the program.
According to documents obtained by The
Inquirer, the so-called Universal Feeding
Program will no longer exist beginning in the
2010 school year.
The change would affect about 121,000 students
getting free and reduced-price school meals. It
also could cost the district $800,000 annually,
and perhaps millions more.
"The implications of eliminating the Universal
Feeding Program within the school district will
have devastating . . . impacts," according to a
written appeal sent last month by the state
Department of Education to the USDA.
Written by Vonda Fekete, the department's
director of child-nutrition programs, the
appeal added that the termination would hurt
"the children who depend upon the school
district as the source, and sometimes the only
source, of one of the basic necessities of
life, which is food."
Fekete would not comment on her appeal.
Vincent Thompson, a spokesman for the school
district, said yesterday: "The district is
disappointed by the decision. We will fight to
reverse it."
Philadelphia model
In April, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) wrote
a letter to the USDA suggesting that the
Philadelphia model be used in other school
districts around the country. Harkin is
chairman of the Senate Committee on
Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.
Both New York and Los Angeles wanted to adapt
the Philadelphia model.
But four months after Harkin wrote his letter,
the USDA sent a letter to the Pennsylvania
Department of Education, announcing the
program's termination.
Universal Feeding was based on a concept
originated by Philadelphia Community Legal
Services and Temple University in 1991.
It eliminated the need for poor children and
their parents to fill out applications for free
and reduced school meals.
Simple as it sounds, the process of having poor
children bring home lunch forms for parents to
fill out is a daunting task, said Jonathan
Stein, general counsel of Community Legal
Services. It was Stein who worked with Temple
to get Universal Feeding going.
Children forget, and poor parents already beset
by outsized difficulties are unwilling or
unable to deal with the forms. And so they
languish unsigned. And children miss out on
meals, Stein said.
At Stein's suggestion, Temple researchers
surveyed Philadelphia schools and learned that
about 200 of the district's 280 schools had
high enrollments of low-income children -
around 75 percent.
"If you have a large majority of poor children
in a school, get rid of the paper applications
and just provide free lunches and breakfasts
for everyone," Stein said.
Eliminating paperwork
The USDA, which funds school lunches through
the state Department of Education, signed on to
what it termed a pilot program that wound up
lasting nearly two decades.
The lack of paperwork saved the district money,
advocates said. And another, more subtle
problem was overcome: poor children's stigma
over receiving free meals.
Studies show that children who are eligible for
free or reduced-cost school meals often do not
eat them if other, better-off students pay for
their own, said Kathy Fisher, an expert on
public benefits for Public Citizens for
Children and Youth in Philadelphia.
The program was eliminating paperwork and
stigma, advocates said. The participation rate
in the Philadelphia Universal Feeding sites has
been nearly twice the rate as in non-Universal
sites - 80 percent vs. 45 percent, Fekete
wrote.
Last year, with USDA collaboration, the school
district paid $550,000 for a new survey
conducted by the Reinvestment Fund in
Philadelphia to update information on the
socioeconomic level of the students in
Universal Feeding, Fekete wrote.
She chided USDA for shutting down the program
after the district spent that money.
Jean Daniel, a USDA spokeswoman, said that
after the study came out, the agency decided it
preferred a standard in which every child
applied individually for meals because it would
be more accurate.
Along with the extra paperwork-processing
costs, the district may face millions more in
losses, Fekete wrote.
A good deal of a school district's funding is
based on the number of low-income students in
its schools. This figure, in turn, is based on
school-lunch data. Therefore, a district with a
lot of poor kids eating free lunch gets more
money.
So if Philadelphia goes back to lunch
applications as the USDA wants, it will
register fewer poor students, since it is
already known that a huge number of poor
students and their parents won't fill out
lunch-application forms.
This could cost the Philadelphia School
District as much as $11 million, Fekete wrote.
In a separate irony, new schools superintendent
Arlene Ackerman began a program last month to
offer breakfast to all students in all schools.
Ackerman's plan depended on the continuation of
Universal Feeding.
Advocates claim that as soon as other cities
clamored for the program, the USDA ended
Universal Feeding in Philadelphia to save
money.
Daniel of the USDA said that wasn't the case.
Members of the Pennsylvania congressional
delegation - including Sens. Bob Casey and
Arlen Specter - sent a letter to USDA Secretary
Ed Schafer yesterday saying that ending
Universal Feeding "reverses the good work" done
to fight hunger.
— Alfred Lubrano
Philadelphia Inquirer
2008-10-22
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/education/20081022_USDA_to_kill_Phila__school_lunch_program.html?adString=inq.living/education;!category=education;&ran
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
[1] 2 3 4 5 6 Next >> Last >>
