Trump freezes $1 billion in food aid given to local schools and food banks
Trump freezes $1 billion in food aid given to local schools and food banks
I usually don't like tooting my own horn, but I'm speaking as someone with 18 years of experience in the financial aspects of school food service. I was one of those middle-management bean counters working for large districts around the Northeast. It is the job of people like me to not only research possible grants and funding sources and ensure the district is getting the maximum benefit, but also to ensure that those benefits are used to their fullest potential to deliver meals to students. We are used to having to deal with fluctuations in what funding we receive and are expected to be able to plan accordingly. If we of all people are the ones saying there's a problem, there's a fucking problem. Like 9.5 on the Richter scale type of problem.
There's a problem.
This will absolutely wreck school food service in many schools. Even before Trump ever set foot in the White House, school food service was often the red-headed stepchild of many school districts that operated on shoestring budgets and were almost always the first to get cuts whenever the school district needed to tighten its belt. These food aid programs in many districts were the only things keeping these programs anything resembling solvent in the first place. I cannot emphasize enough how reliant that our NSLP programs are on this funding.
At least right now, schools are still required to continue serving lunch under federal law. Of course, I'm sure that this will be rectified once Trump realizes that the NSLP exists and decides to cut that too because the program is using food grown in Canada to feed gay kids or something. What this is going to lead to is that NSLP programs are going to be cut to federally required minimums. And without these grants to pay for it, other school services will have to be cut. Teachers will have to be laid off. Other programs will have to be cut in order to pay for school food service. All of this and students will end up receiving less nutritious meals than they received before anyway. Again, that's until Trump realizes the program even exists and just shuts it down entirely.
You know how we occasionally see those articles about students carrying huge lunch debts at school? Think that, except worse. And everywhere.
"Huge lunch debts"??? WTF is this even? How does the US even function?
I mean, like this. This is pretty much where our "prosperity" comes from. We require everyone to be responsible for even the most basic of needs and in return we get to have crazy profit margins that disproportionately benefit the people that would still be embarrassingly rich if they paid for every kid to get a free school lunch.
We require everyone to be responsible for even the most basic of needs and in return we get to have crazy profit margins that disproportionately benefit the people that would still be embarrassingly rich if they paid for every kid to get a free school lunch.
I just want to clarify something for the record. Again, speaking as a person with 18 years of direct experience on this exact subject. It was literally my job to ensure that the districts I worked for received the maximum in grants and those grants were applied to maximum benefit for students.
The profit margins on school food service is borderline nonexistent. Not even pennies on the dollar. When I left the company I worked for last year, average costs per meal hovered around $2.50 to $3 per meal. The breakfast program as a whole has been a huge financial money pit for at least the past 15 years or so and is almost entirely subsidized by money generated from the lunch program. Overall, my company was making about 3-5 cents per meal by the time the dust settled. You're talking about profit margins of well under 1%. School districts have to put out an RFP usually every 3-5 years depending on local laws, and I have seen districts either receive single bids or no bids at all because there's almost no money to be made, particularly in smaller districts. I've seen companies pull out of districts mid-year because their projections were nowhere near reality, leaving districts scrambling to find new management companies.
Nobody is getting rich off of school food service. At least, not at the public school level. (Universities, hospitals, and even some private schools are a different story. I'm talking strictly about public schools.). The NSLP program has been severely under-funded for years. As a prime example, Michell Obama's Healthy meals act that was passed during Obama's presidency increased the average costs per meal in my area by about 14 cents per meal at the time, but compliance with the act only netted six cents in increased reimbursements. Doesn't sound like a lot, but if your district is serving 10,000 meals per day for 180 days a year, that 8 cent difference comes out to $144,000 that the district has to cover just to remain in compliance. School lunch programs are often the first to receive cuts whenever possible because school districts consider lunch a low priority. Many districts would do away with it entirely if they were legally allowed to. And federal reimbursements for free and reduced students are several years behind the times.
I could go on and on and on, but I'm sure you get the idea. Nobody's making money. If anyone has questions, I'd be more than happy to answer, but I just want to make sure everybody understands this.
Nobody is getting rich off of school food service.
Thanks for your insight but I wasn't implying food service is profitable. I was trying to say money gets diverted elsewhere because it's so limited in its profit. American dollars chase profit above all else, even to the detriment of society as a whole.
I don't disagree.
I just felt I had to say that because I've had the argument with numerous people numerous times over the years, and there's a belief that the school food service companies that are out there are making money hand over fist off of school lunches. There's plenty of problems with school food service, but I can tell you that that is absolutely not one of them.
How does the US even function?
Mostly by strip mining the rest of the planet for profit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_therapy_(economics)
Usually Economic Shock Treatment was doled out by countries like the USA via their clandestine operations of the CIA with the intent to subjugate potential trade partners and force absurdly good deals for the USA. This kind of tomfoolery is part of what has allowed the US to retain such economic dominance without having to deeply improve conditions internally, because we just steal the wealth of the rest of the world while never actually fixing our own shitshow of a government.
Only recently has it become the norm for nations to self-impose this insanity on themselves, like Javier Milei in Argentina or Donald Trump in the USA... Doing it yourself... doesn't work very well...
With hopes and prayers.
And bootstraps!
You have no idea. The US is a complete capitalist dystopia. I finally realized this several months ago when I read news stories about "vanlords" renting broken down vans parked on the streets for people to live in, for hundreds of dollars a month.
It's so refreshing to see non Americans react the way we Americans should. Feeding children, just one meal a day, is too big of an ask for too many Americans and "Christian" posers. There is even the added selling point, kids learn better when they aren't fucking hungry. Don't we want our kids smart or at least be able to learn? American is a shameful cruel place
The US functions?
To add to your comment, coming from the Northwest, food service in schools struggles so hard that they sometimes accidentally create cultural icons. "Cheese Zombies" and tomato soup were a staple of my childhood, and many in Washington are familiar with them, because they became extremely popular with children. Many in California are familiar with a similar recipe of the same name. They both came from schools trying to work within the constraints of the food they had available to them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese_zombie
One type of cheese zombie was invented in Yakima, Washington, by employees of the Grandview School District in the early 1960s. The employees were under the direction of Dorothy L. Finch, the lunch program supervisor. Finch and her employees invented the cheese zombie while trying to come up with ways to use surplus Velveeta cheese. The Yakima cheese zombie consists of a layer of cheese baked between two layers of bread dough and then sliced into squares, giving them the appearance of sandwiches. The cheese zombie was so named because one of the cooks said the first batch looked like a zombie.
A similar dish with the same name was also invented in California around the same time by cooks at a California high school.
A second type of cheese zombie was invented in Concord, California, in 1963 by Decla Phillips and Helen Ballock, bakers employed at Mount Diablo High School. The Concord cheese zombie was also created by layering cheese, in this case American cheese, between two layers of bread dough. A key difference between the Concord and Yakima cheese zombies is that the Concord version is cut into circles and crimped with a special tool before baking, which helps to contain the cheese within the bun. The pair were possibly inspired by Ballock's husband's recipe for Pirozhki.
Also, thank you for your service to children by working hard to make the budgets work for food services in schools.
