Questioning the F&R lunch data

#1 - Our federal and state tax dollars should not be funding free lunch for anybody
#2 – Our state tax dollars should not be funding “diversity” busing.
#3 - Now that we have compromised that basic fundamental principal of our near perfect union, it is a complete abomination that the F&R funds have be misused the way they have been in Wake Co (with little to no oversight by anyone).
#4 – Finally, realizing that in Wake Co., we also use this flawed F&R data to support and justify spending public funds on the “diversity” busing program should send everyone over the top (like is does me)!

Bigwinnie
Clearly, with no room for interpretation, the Dec of Ind and the Const. place a high value on individual liberties and property rights. No value is placed on providing any citizen with free stuff from the government (with the exception of protection from foreign governments).

10. Owning a home
9. Owning a cell phone
8. Cable or satelite TV service
7. Anything but free internet service
6. Owning more than one vehicle or owning a vehicle valued at more than $5000.
5. Owning more than one TV or a TV valued at more than $100.
4. Owning an I-pod or MP3 player
3. Beer in your refrigerator
2. Not actively seeking employment or additional employment
1. Having children who are overweight

Isn't F&R status used as one of the criteria for admission to magnet programs? If so - mis-stating your F&R status reaches far beyond getting a free lunch.....

Read the Declaration of Independence, read the Constitution, read some books on Jefferson, Adams, Madison, GW, Hamilton, etc. and you will clearly see the core values they had in black and white. Core values are learned, not made up on a whim.

bigwinnie
There is nothing wrong with evolving as a society as long as you understand and stick to the core principals that made the country great. The problem with liberals is that they do not have core principals and therefore do not understand the value in sticking to them.

As both Kent and I have alluded to above, no where in our country’s constitution and certainly not in the vision of our forefathers has a free lunch been a right. “Free and Reduced Lunch” is a misnomer anyway as there is no such thing. It should really be called, “Part of Somebody Else’s Lunch Because We (the government) Thought They Should Share”.
Our founding fathers never would have approved of taking someone’s property (through taxes) to provide free lunch to someone else. In fact, that was one their greatest fears when establishing a democracy. As many of you may know, the “pursuit of happiness” statement was somewhat of a last minute and reluctant change to the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Originally it was “property”.
F&R is simply another government program like those that sprung out of The Great Depression era and FDR’s New Deal. Just like social security, Medicaid, and soon to be socialized medicine, these types of programs will bankrupt our economy and destroy or country as we know it. Unfortunately, these programs tend to feed themselves just like the F&R appears to. We can clearly see how the F&R hurts the education system in Wake County and thus generates more F&R kids down the road. All, especially the poor, will suffer from the path we are on.

The short-term way out of the mess the schools have put themselves into through over-enrollment in the F&R program is to sign-up only those families qualifying for food stamps, a program known for better oversight. In 2006, the US Census Bureau reported that fewer than 5% of families living in Wake County received food stamps, quite a bit less than the 29% enrolled in the F&R program. WCPSS and the DPI have reported to me that they have additional means to qualify students other than from the food stamp data they receive from HHS or the - often falsified - income statements from parents: "migrant" workers (probably illegals), homeless children (how many can that be?), children from recently-divorced parents, and "others". Each school has an administrator empowered to enroll children, and that's probably where some of the problems start. An aweful lot of parents are defrauding the government, which means those of us who abide laws. And it appears that county and state public education officials are well aware of this, and have done nothing to prevent it or prosecute cheaters. What's worse, they use these bloated figures as a basis to bus kids all across the county. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence from parents across the state that schools aggressively sign up families for this program whether they are entitled or not. There is more than sufficient evidence for county, state and federal investigations and the subsequent prosection of those now cheating.

We're talking about a good chunk of money: based on statistics I have obtained from WCPSS, approximately $10 million is spent annually in Wake County alone on free lunches. If 2/3rds of families now receiving these are not entitled to them, we're talking about some $7m being wasted. We could build two new Thales Academies for that money, housing nearly 900 students K-8. Every year! This does not include the expense of free breakfasts or free meals that are provided to F&R kids during their vacations, as someone recently mentioned on a WPTF call-in.

Each family now defrauding the system costs us annually $315 (180 days X $1.75 lunch cost). For a family with two children in Wake schools, that's $630/year. What would the IRS or the NC Department of Revenue say if a taxpayer refused to pay a tax bill of $630?

But why have this program at all? Parents, what are the two least expensive meals of the day for a child? My siblings and I grew up on Cheerios and PBJ sandwiches. We did the same with our three (government-school educated) kids; it took about 5 minutes to prepare three brown-bag lunches each day at a very low cost. The bottom line is simply: if you can't afford the diapers (and food), don't have kids.

It does my heart good to hear parents and people in the communities become aware and furious about the whole system. With the budgets, reassignments, schedules, forced year round, now the F&R lunch....just to let everyone know...it is no longer going to be call F&R anymore. They are changing the label to "ED"...Economically Disadvantaged...since F&R has such a "bad" "harmful" stigma to it....LOL I just laugh at that.

Things just can't go on the way they are going. It seems to just get worse and worse and worse. I get frustrated with the ones that NEED to be held accountable are NEVER being accountable! Del Burns with that curriculum audit....that was not needed. We don't need to look at Wake County Public Schools curriculum.....we need to see the whole workings of the folks that work on Wake Forest Rd.
The "poor" isn't missing out on anything. Schools have sponsors for Christmas and let me tell you, they aren't missing out on anything for Christmas. Some parents have schools, churches and community organizations giving gifts for Christmas....they are probably getting more than most children in their classrooms.
I was informed that parents shouldn't buy any of the spring pictures that they take each year. The ones they bring home and view and then you pay for the ones you want and then send back the ones you don't want. They are getting more and more costly! It's getting more expensive because the picture company has padded the fees to balance off the ones that are NEVEr returned and nothing is done about it. Teachers can't keep them....since the parents have the right to look and view them. I told my sister-in-law...never to purchase another, because you are paying for my nephew's pictures along with probably 2 other kids that never bring them back. I have heard that close to 50% of the picture packets are NEVER RETURNED...the whole packet cost around $50 bucks.
Just think of that....$50 per child....in a class of 20 , half will make 10 kids that don't return. You do the math...that's $500.oo in that ONE ONE ONE class....then multiply that by the rest of the school. It's just ridiculous.
The same for lunches....there's not many that are that bad off....they bring snacks or best yet...they bring extra money to buy ice cream and cookies. LOL
Yeah and Wake county has their "Approved Snack List" has anyone ever looked at that list. It's funny how its grouped by Named brands. I think they are getting a kick back $$$$ from the companys like you would "indorse" something on tv. But they call it "healthy snacks". Those snacks are not all that healthy! Then they pin down the poor teachers and other parents that want to be creative and use "snacks" , candies, etc. for instructional purposes to make it creative.
As you can tell....I'm pretty hot over all this.

I'd like to know....WHY???? does the Board of ED. meet at such an odd time ? Why do they meet at 2:00 or 2:30?? I'm not stupid...I know why...I would just like to get their feedback for that reason.

It should meet at 6:00 or close to that, so that more parents can come to be vocal.

I think it's time for all parents to stand up and really raise a fuss and say....we are sick and tired of this shit!!!

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/WalterEWilliams/2007/10/31/are_the_poor_getting_poorer

*sniff* Makes my heart break to think about them.

>> Clearly, WCPSS is overenrolling children by a factor of 300%.

That incorrectly assumes one enrolled child per food stamp family. In reality one family cheating the system could result in multiple children having their benefits reduced. So 300% is inaccurate. At an average of 2 or 3 kids per family, that works to around 100-150% overenrollment. Which is unacceptable, but not as sensational as the 300% claim.

Early in my blogging "career" I asked HOW could our total FNR numbers be going UP when the numbers of transplants moving here are by-and-large probably NOT qualified to receive the FNR benefit.

But, now I know.

Slightly off-topic, I have a friend with 3 kids in Minneapolis who makes >$60,000, and HIS FAMILY qualifies for FNR in their system. Isn't that INSANE?!? $60,000 and with 3 kids you qualify for a FREE or REDUCED PRICE lunch?!? He kinda laughs it off, but I am APPALLED that a family making $60,000 ANYWHERE in the USA could be considered "too poor" to afford lunch for 3 kids!
This system (both locally and nationally) is broken, broken, broken. When did the Department of Education become the Department-of-Fixing-All-Society's-Problems-and-then-maybe- if-You're-Lucky-Dealing-with-Education?

How do you proove you don't have something? Sure, its easy to proove what your income is when you have a legitimate income. You provide bank statements, tax returns, pay stubs, etc. The IRS spends billions of our tax dollars trying to figure out people's income and fails, how the "heck" is WCPSS going to do this? What a nightmare.
According to our founding fathers, there are three inalienable rights (life, liberty and the persuit of happiness). I can't find free lunch or a bus ride across town anywhere in there. Can someone please show it to me?

One apparent weakness in the process is that applicants only have to self-report their income. They don't have to provide proof to get the benefit.

Here we go -- let's form yet another massive bureaucracy that will better control the F&R application process. Then we can form an audit bureaucracy that periodically reviews the F&R application bureaucracy. Then we can form another bureaucracy that determines corrective actions as discovered by the audit bureaucracy. Then we can form another...

Meanwhile, our education is dying on the vine in the name of a noble but futile and impractical effort to fix societal problems.

Here's a serious idea that will be immediately shot down for (insert demagogic phrase here) Let's get back to education and not fixing every identifiable ill.

Nice going, clowns.