Essay On Public School Lunches

The school cafeteria offers students an opportunity to nourish their minds and bodies while socializing with other students in the midst of structured curriculum; yet, not every student in line for their meal will be able to afford the school lunch. The growing divide amongst free and reduced meals and academic success has continued to develop as schools fail to reach a general consensus on providing meals. The paper will focus on the extent to which politics are influencing federal funding of public school lunch programs which aim to enhance the social, academic, and physical success of students. At the start of the 2015 school year, approximately 22 million children’s families had qualified for federal assistance on the free and reduced which amounts to 72% of lunches served in the nation’s schools (Sullivan, Maureen). Under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture, the program has reached new levels of funding that are a striking difference from their 1947 start as a $70 million dollar program (Sullivan, Maureen). Today, in conjunction with …show more content…
As more and more students are qualifying for these benefits and school districts are extracting large sums of money from the government, it becomes difficult to see how certain students requiring the most help and financial assistance are left behind. Historically, schools have been slowly qualifying more students for their programs as seen in the difference between 1969 where approximately 2.9 million students qualified, fast forward to 2014 and only 28.4% were paying full price under the Obama Administration (Sullivan, Maureen). The social and political stigma of openly advocating for taking away meals from children has enabled the instability of the school lunch program to perpetuate through the