#105. Paying for School Lunches

Black people love to eat, with passing on seconds a rarity at any dining table or food establishment they frequent.

It is a well known factoid that within 30 years (if trends of food consumption continue unabated) EVERY American Black woman will be considered morbidly obese. The obesity epidemic among Black people, coupled with the recent passing of universal health care translates to tax payers once again picking up the bill to have the fat surgically-removed from the bellies of these turgid individuals.

Why, South Carolina has decided to preempt this by paying for bariatric surgery for state employees:

South Carolina lawmakers chose paying for weight-loss surgery for obese state workers at $24,000 a pop over putting teachers in the classroom, one state senator said Thursday.

Sen. Greg Ryberg, R-Aiken, said special interest groups won a victory over taxpayers when the Legislature decided to put $2.4 million toward gastric bypass and Lap-Band surgery for 100 of the state's heaviest employees, under a state health plan pilot program that begins Jan. 1.

"I think that with folks being furloughed or losing their jobs that it's the wrong message to send," state Rep. Mike Sottile, R-Isle of Palms, said.

But Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, said obese state workers are destined for massive health problems, and finding ways to cut health costs is a good idea.

"If it will save us money and save their lives," he said, "then together it's a good investment."

Meanwhile, T. Karl Byrne, a surgeon at the Medical University of South Carolina, said gastric bypass and adjustable gastric band surgery, among other stomach-shrinking procedures, already have been proved to be cost-effective investments. North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia are among the majority of Southeastern states that cover the procedure for state workers, he said. Medicaid and Medicare also cover it, Byrne said.

"We do not need 100 patients in a pilot program in this state," Byrne said. "We already know what the results are."

Expect other states (especially those in the south - where 54 percent of Black population of the US resides) to mimic this program and pass similar legislation. Black Run America (BRA) requires the employment of a disproportionate share of Black individuals in the public sector, because the private sector finds great difficulty in providing tasks that Black people can capably comply with and complete (state interference in hiring methods notwithstanding).

There is a saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but this is patently untrue. Have you not heard of the National School Lunch Program?:

The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program operating in over 101,000 public and non‐profit private schools and residential child care institutions.

It provides nutritionally balanced, low‐cost or free lunches to more than 30.5 million children each school day in 2008. In 1998, Congress expanded the National School Lunch Program to include reimbursement for snacks served to children in afterschool educational and enrichment programs to include children through 18 years of age.

30.5 million school children received free or discounted lunches in 2008. Of course, taking care of children is a requirement for a prosperous future. A nation that neglects its youth is one that fails to prepare for a vital and competitive future.

Who are these children receiving free lunches? Well, The New York Times offers a glimpse into the the lunchrooms of America's schools with shocking honesty:

The South has become the first region in the country where more than half of public school students are poor and more than half are members of minorities, according to a new report.

The shift was fueled not by white flight from public schools, which spiked during desegregation but has not had much effect on school demographics since the early 1980s. Rather, an influx of Latinos and other ethnic groups, the return of blacks to the South and higher birth rates among black and Latino families have contributed to the change.

The new numbers, from the 2008-9 school year, are a milestone for the South, “the only section of the United States where racial slavery, white supremacy and racial segregation of schools were enforced through law and social custom,” said the report, to be released on Thursday by the Southern Education Foundation, a nonprofit group based here that supports education improvement in the region. But the numbers also herald the future of the country as a whole, as minority students are expected to exceed 50 percent of public school enrollment by 2020 and the share of students poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches is on the rise in every state.

The South, desperate for a well-educated work force that can attract economic development, will face an enormous challenge in tackling on such a broad scale the lower achievement rates among poor and minority students, who score lower than average on tests and drop out more frequently than whites. Four of the 15 states in the report — Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — now have a majority of both low-income and minority pupils. Only one, Virginia, has neither.

“This is the beginning of a very clear trend that has enormous implications,” said Michael A. Rebell, the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University. “When we realize that the majority of graduates of our schools in the long run are going to come from backgrounds with educational deprivation, it makes it imperative that schools be improved.”

School districts in the South are already struggling to adapt, but it is not clear which methods are most effective.

“That’s the question that Congress, the legislature, the Gates Foundation — everybody’s trying to solve that,” said Arthur C. Johnson, the superintendent of the Palm Beach School District in Florida, which has gone from 40 percent minority students to 63 percent in 15 years. Remedial programs, career-centered academies, and intensive teacher training have helped, Mr. Johnson said, but have not closed the gap in achievement and graduation rates.

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia and Maryland have been among those states where poor and minority students have shown the most improvement in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math. From 2003 to 2007, black fourth-graders in Alabama showed the most improvement of any state in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, though they still rank slightly below average.

In Tennessee, where many districts have seen Hispanic enrollment increase by factors of 10 or more, districts have scrambled to hire more teachers of English as a second language. In Mississippi, which has no publicly financed preschool, some schools have used federal money for poor students to prepare 4-year-olds for the classroom.

In Louisiana, a recent study has tried to determine which teacher-training programs are most effective. Districts are experimenting with ways to attract more experienced teachers to high-risk schools.

“We’ve got to figure out how to break the cycle of poverty, and the way we’re doing it now isn’t working,” said Hank M. Bounds, the Mississippi commissioner of higher education and, until recently, the state superintendent of schools. “An affluent 5-year-old has about the same vocabulary as an adult living in poverty.”

More minority students in a district does not mean that classrooms are more integrated, said Richard Fry, a senior research associate with the Pew Hispanic Center, whose research shows that most white children in the South attend predominantly white schools and an even higher percentage of black and Hispanic children attend predominantly minority schools.

Southern schools are far more segregated now than they were at the height of integration in the ’70s and ’80s, a period that saw a narrowing of the achievement gap, said Gary Orfield, the co-director of The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at U.C.L.A. The South has the lowest percentage of children in private school of any region, Mr. Orfield said.

Minority schools tend to be larger, have higher student-teacher ratios and have higher poverty rates, Mr. Fry said. For some education advocates, such correlations raise the possibility that politicians will be less likely to adequately finance public schools as they fill with poor and minority students.

“We have a history of providing the least educational resources to the students who need the most,” said Steve Suitts, the vice president of the Southern Education Foundation and the author of the study. “The people in the South have to be concerned about all children, not just their own grandchildren.”

On the other hand, Southern politicians are keenly aware of the need for an educated work force. Spurred in part by school financing lawsuits, more than half the 15 states included in the study already provide more state and local financing to heavily poor or minority districts than to affluent or low-minority ones, according to figures compiled by Education Trust, an advocacy group in Washington. But schools often layer programs on top of programs without analyzing which are effective, said Daria Hall, the trust’s director of K-12 policy.

Hold your horses... more state and local money is diverted to heavily poor (which translates to minority) districts instead of areas with a high concentration of white (read "affluent") zones?

As one can read, Black Run America (BRA) has decided to invest greater resources into taking care of one segment of society, while reducing resources towards that segment of society that has historically discriminatory and so must eternally suffer for the sins of past white racism.

This report from the Southern Education Foundation showcases the future of the south, a region whose majority of young people have been brought into the world by parents suffering from high rates of poverty:

The South, desperate for a well-educated work force that can attract economic development, will face an enormous challenge in tackling such a broad scale the lower achievement rates among poor and minority students, who score lower than average on tests and drop out more frequently than whites.

Four of the 15 states in the report — Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — now have a majority of both low-income and minority pupils.

Only one, Virginia, has neither.

“This is the beginning of a very clear trend that has enormous implications,” said Michael A. Rebell, the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University. “When we realize that the majority of graduates of our schools in the long run are going to come from backgrounds with educational deprivation, it makes it imperative that schools be improved.”

As we saw when 30,000 Black people rioted over signing up for Section 8 Housing Vouchers in East Point, Georgia (like Clayton County, once a white city overwhelmed by high-levels of Black poverty), the future is now. There is no turning back.

Huntsville, a city with the most intelligent white students in the state of Alabama, also sports a growing majority of Black students who produce scholastically inept results in the classroom.

These results are not indigenous to Huntsville, nor the South, but reproduced always in classrooms where white and Black students learn together. With the highest achieving group now a minority - and one that receives less federal dollars for schools and fewer free lunches - what do you suppose the future of job creation, employment opportunities and the standard of living will be in the South, for that matter America?

The free lunch program provides what parents who brought the child into the world through an inability to practice safe coitus cannot provide:

Since 2005, Hamilton County has seen a 20 percent increase in the percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches — the measure used by the federal government to determine how much financial assistance a school or school system receives for poor students, according to Tennessee’s education Report Cards.

Some of the greatest increases occurred in suburban schools, such as Ooltewah High School and East Brainerd Elementary School.

While the shift in financial status of local families with school-aged children largely has been unseen outside the school system, it’s a trend that holds true for districts across the region.

Nearby Cleveland City Schools has had a 59 percent increase, while Polk County has seen its number of economically disadvantaged students rise by nearly 50 percent.

School systems in Georgia are not immune. The number of economically disadvantaged children in Chickamauga City Schools grew by more than 50 percent; 25 percent in Catoosa County Schools; 24 percent in Dade; 20 percent in Walker; and about 15 percent in Whitfield schools, Georgia education records show.

The entire South made news in the last year after a report by the Southern Education Foundation declared it to be the first region in the nation where a majority of students were poor minorities.

What’s tricky, said Alan Richard, spokesman for the Southern Regional Education Board, is that the impact of economics on education can be a vicious cycle.

To improve the economic picture, more people need to finish high school and go to college, he said.

“The higher your education level, plain and simple, the more money you make,” Richard said. “It has tremendous ramifications for education in the South.”

40 million Americans are on food stamps. 30.5 million young Americans received free or discounted lunches. And yet, the fecundity rates of the poor and poverty stricken continue to grow exponentially, as the state has no problem caring for the children of these individuals (nor do they stop once they grow up as correctional facilities provide food and recreation as well).

77 percent of Black children in the 4th grade receive free lunches at school nationwide (rates for the South have yet to be found):

The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program that provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches to children from low-income families in public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions (U.S. Department of Agriculture 2005).¹¹ Eligibility for the free and reduced-price lunch program is often used as a proxy measure of family income.

Overall, 48 percent of public school 4th-graders were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches in 2009. White 4th-graders had the lowest percentage of eligible students (29 percent). The percentages of Black (74 percent), Hispanic (77 percent), and American Indian/Alaska Native (68 percent) 4th-graders who were eligible were higher than the percentages of White 4th-graders and Asian/Pacific Islander (34 percent) 4th-graders who were eligible.

One need not be a math prodigy to estimate the rate of free lunches for all Black school children, based on the 4th grade numbers.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes paying for school lunches. Money will always be found - provided by the tax payer - to pay for school lunches for those whose parents were not only reckless in bed, but reckless in relying on the generosity of Federal Government.

As we have seen with the Section 8 Housing Voucher riot, the future of the South (a region that has a majority of poor minority students, who come from poor minority families), money and time are in a race with other to see which runs out first.

The results won't be pretty, but they confirm the fact that BRA is coming to a close.