State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, introduced a bill this week that could potentially make it easier for California public school students to access to free meals during and after the pandemic.
“School Meals for All” or Senate Bill 364, expresses the Legislature’s intentions to alleviate child hunger in the state. The bill proposes establishing a free meal program — where students from any income level are guaranteed food — and a Better Out of School Time (BOOST) program to provide children with meals when schools are closed during breaks and unforeseen disasters.
The bill’s free meal promises resemble those in the Pandemic Child Hunger Prevention Act, a temporary act passed by Congress last year to support school meal programs during the pandemic.
The bill also proposes prioritizing using food grown and produced in the state for the meals to support local food producers.
Don’t want to sound too cold here but why have children you can’t afford to feed?
Because the state will pay for them by taking money from taxpayers who did not have children they could not afford. This ultimately results in demographic replacement.
So when people lose their jobs they should put their kids up for adoption? Is that your plan?
Read it again, Chuq. It’s the “School Meals For All” bill, not the “School Meals For Children Of Unemployed Parents” bill.
Chuq interprets a statement into something that wasn’t intended, then argues against his erroneous point…again.
This bill will ensure that if a parent suddenly loses a job, suffers through expensive medication complications, or has other unexpected emergency financial burden, their child will still have access to food without being delayed by an application and vetting process which can take time to get approval.
This bill will ensure that if a child accidentally forgets their lunch at home and doesn’t have any money on hand, they will get a meal. Maintaining a database of running tabs, takes staff time which costs money. It would just be cheaper to give a forgetful student a meal.
School food isn’t the greatest. Most kids will want to eat food from home, and most parents will want their kids to eat food from home.
@googlar: According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more white students in this country qualify for free meals than all other ethnicities combined. So before you start marching down the street yelling “you will not replace us”, maybe do some research.
Nice idea but who is buying?
If you cannot afford to feed your children, then your priorities are not what they should be.
Nancy Skinner is all you need to know.
That’s a fact.
Better read the whole bill, as her real agenda will be buried in there somewhere.
@The Fearless Spectator: The bill is only 1 page long. Where in that short text is there a hidden agenda? I have a feeling that you didn’t read the bill.
Hey Nancy, start working at the root of the problem. Why are some many of your residents living in poverty? Write bills that help create jobs, train people, allow businesses to open easier. What are you doing about poverty beside give aways that don’t life people up.
hey don’t worry about actually letting the kid’s go inside a school to learn or anything
But it’s cool they’ve had free food take out since March 14, 2020 but not been inside a classroom or church
Keep the “ freebies” coming …
* Follow the money … notice her stipulation on where the food must be bought from
I wonder what local farmers she knows ???
Is it election time already for this Beserkely Senator?
Try teaching people to fish rather than just keep giving them fish…
The crap they feed kids in school is basically poison! Whenever the government is giving something for free there’s always a catch!
The food is “free” for whoever eats it but everybody else pays for it. The steady march to socialism
There is no middle ground anymore. Some people have a bad day that leads to a bad year. They are allowed to receive help. Why would you even say something so nasty outside yourself? There will always be people in need. Sometimes they are outside the country, and sometimes they are within. Your help doesn’t mean you get to criticize. Why are the people on here so negative??? Stop bickering and think of something positive to say! What happened to “if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at ALL”. There are well off parents who forget lunch for their kids. Should they go hungry because dad was running late for an executive meeting?? Who cares!? They are kids. Feed them! Yay! One less thing to worry for everyone. This should have been a part of school a long time ago. Especially when they told us what we could and could not feed our own children.
I try to just read and move past but I am so appalled and how ugly people are to one another. Just pause and think about the ugliness your words spread. Not helping one bit. Just dividing more. Don’t knock someone unless you been in their shoes. It’s okay to help and get help. Be at peace with yourself.
My child qualified for free lunch, even though I worked full time. But, I packed his lunch every day. He refused to eat school food. One day in the CARES after-school program, they took away his organic corn chips (non-GMO corn, salt, oil) because they were “unhealthy,” per the district guidelines. Then gave him a bag of “healthy” chips with a huge list of chemicals and things I could not pronounce for the ingredients that included “this product is made with genetically engineered ingredients” on the label. He did not eat them. I found them in his backpack. The next day I ripped them a new one. They did not take his snack away again.
School food is the same food that prisons get. It is not grade A. At one point, there was talk about serving milk with less sugar (lactose) that had added aspartame to it so there would be fewer calories making it “healthier.” I don’t know if they went through with it.
They try to restrict the amount of sugar in foods they are allowed to have at school. Kids can’t even bring cupcakes to school on their birthdays.
The school lunch program changed under Obama (who said he would make sure that GMO products would be labeled and then hired a Monsanto executive to head the FDA), with his wife leading the way.
The bill is supported by locally small organic farmers and nutritional education groups. The bill requires locally grown food. State law has requirements to ensure proper servings of vegetable, fruits, grains, and proteins.
Specific menus are set by individual school districts. The Sausalito Marin City School District has gone non-GMO.