Children whose parents fail to pay for school lunches are being served cold cheese sandwiches under a policy instituted by the Albuquerque Public Schools. The alternative meals go to children “whose parents are supposed to be able to pay for some or all of their regular meals but fail to pick up the tab,” the New York Times reports.
Such policies have become a necessity for schools seeking to keep budgets in the black while ensuring children don’t go hungry. School districts including those in Chula Vista, Calif.; Hillsborough County, Fla.; and Lynnwood, Wash.; have also taken to serving cheese sandwiches to children with delinquent lunch accounts.
The policy has sharply divided the community. Critics say the cheese sandwiches punish children whose parents can’t afford to pay. “Others have flooded talk radio shows thanking the district for imposing a policy that commands parental responsibility,” the Times reports.
“This is one of those cases where you wish school districts wouldn’t do it,” says one editorial, “but you understand why they have to.”
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to shorten the school year by 5 days to save money. Georgia is proposing larger class sizes for next year. One Detroit elementary school is even asking for donations of toilet paper and light bulbs to continue operating.
Things are tough all over, but with drumbeats for a bailout of state budgets growing louder, Mike Petrilli, Checker Finn and Rick Hess argue at National Review that a stimulus package may retard education reform. “There’s scant evidence that an extra dollar invested in today’s schools delivers an extra dollar in value,” the trio note. “And ample evidence that this kind of bail-out will spare school administrators from making hard-but-overdue choices about how to make their enterprise more efficient and effective.”
Over at Flypaper, Petrilli writes with eyes wide open, “Yes, we’re ready for the hate mail.”
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The Fordham Foundation’s Checker Finn looks at the budget austerity facing U.S. schools in the new Education Gadfly, and the conventional wisdom that any reductions are bound to damage the quality of schooling. He lays out and skewers a half dozen arguments typically used to combat cuts:
We see signs of the “Washington Monument gambit,” i.e., the threat by the National Park Service that, if it doesn’t get more money, it won’t be able to keep one of the Capital’s foremost tourist attractions open for visitors. Its counterpart in public education is to say that, if we have to cut our budget, we’ll have to (take your pick) eliminate sports, increase class size, abbreviate the school year, scrap gifted education, end after-school programs, curb college counseling, close the school library, etc., etc. That’s how school systems think about budgets: in terms of “programs” and “services,” not efficiencies, productivity, or such tradeoffs as personnel versus technology.
The kicker comes at the end, when it’s revealed that Finn’s essay is a barely updated version of a previous piece he wrote five years ago–the last time there were widespread budget cuts.
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