The thought of allowing students to go hungry at school is unconscionable for any normal human being, but it’s something our government is quite adept at; ignoring child hunger is one of the few things governments at all levels seem to accomplish with ease.
As you can see, each state approaches feeding children at school a bit differently. But rather than simply declare that all children have a right to be fed and it’s our inherent duty to accomplish that in a public school setting, the laws surrounding school meals remain a Byzantine exercise that seems intent on creating the illusion of even attempting the bare minimum.
North Dakota’s War Against Hungry Children
North Dakota has recently taken things to another low point in this country’s war against hungry kids. Recently, the state Senate narrowly rejected a bill by one vote that would provide universal free school lunches – but hey, at least it was a narrow vote!
The bill would have provided free lunch to students from families at 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $49,720 for a family of three.
This bill was already watered down by this point, too. Originally, it was to provide universal school meals to kids regardless of income, but that had no shot of succeeding. And the failed bill would have only funded the program for a whopping two years.
Perhaps most infuriating about the vote was Senator Mike Wobbema’s comments on the bill: “I can understand kids going hungry, but is that really the problem of the school district? Is that the problem of the state of North Dakota? It’s really the problem of parents being negligent with their kids.”
Putting aside for just a second the typical stupidity of blaming “negligent parents,” the fact is that, yes, that is the problem of the school district and the state of North Dakota. It most certainly is.
Rather than fulfilling the one basic requirement of a functioning governing body, which is to provide for its citizens – and in this case, the most vulnerable among us – yet another legislature has taken the valiant stand against children and their needs. There’s little else the United States likes to do more than punish the poor and people put in dire situations they can’t get out of no matter how hard they work. So all in all, this tracks.
It brings to mind one of Carlin’s best bits from his 1996 special Back in Town, which somehow seems to get more relevant by the day:
“Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren’t they? They’re all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you’re born, you’re on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don’t want to know about you. They don’t want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you’re preborn, you’re fine; if you’re preschool, you’re fucked.”
The North Dakota Senate’s Brave Choice to Increase Its Own Per Diem
What also tracks in all of this is that the North Dakota Senate followed up that vote against children with one that increased their own meal budgets “due to inflation,” that wonderful fallback excuse that can explain away any government or corporation doing something to screw people over.
The Senate’s meal budgets will now be increased from from $7 to $9 in the morning, $10 to $14 in the afternoon and $17 to $22 in the evening.
North Dakota, of course, isn’t alone here. Most states simply don’t want to be bothered with what is often callously referred to as the “financial burden” of feeding kids. Even the federal government gets in on the fun sometimes; during the height of the pandemic, the U.S. provided free school lunches to all 50 million public school students in the nation. That program has since been retired, and states were left to fend for themselves once again.
California, Colorado, and Maine have since made universal free school meals a permanent fixture, and there are a number of states working to do the same. But not North Dakota. No, that is not a state burdened by the pesky thought of kids going hungry.
