The Facts About Free and Reduced Lunches in Relation to Poverty Poverty is an on going problem within the United States. One of the terrifying issues with Poverty is that this problem is not only affecting adults, but children as well. There are numerous polices and issues related to children living in poverty. One of these polices is the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). This policy is federally funded and makes it possible for children living in poverty to get free or reduced lunches. NSLP helps to relieve the issue of hunger in school-aged children whose parents cannot afford to pay for school lunches. This policy is a very common in public school systems. Snyder and Musu-Gillette states, “The National School Lunch Program is the largest
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According to Karger “NSLP is a federally assisted meal program that served 31 million children in around 100,000 public and nonprofit private schools and residential childcare institutions in 2011” (2014). The schools that participate in this program get money and some supplies in order to compensate for the lunches that free. It is noted that, “the money goes to paying for the program’s 53 workers, supplies, electricity and cleaning materials” (WetzelStaff 2016). There are two types of participants in this program: those who get there lunches for free and those who pay a reduced amount of forty cents per meal (Karger 2014). Another concept to look at is how much a single lunch could mean to a child. In the BBC News article “Your View on School Meals” it …show more content…
Similar to most of the policies that are enforced in this country NSLP is extremely complicated. Generally it is passed off of family income and the amount of people in the family. Devore stated, “The free and reduced lunch program eligibility was $44,123 in 2014—far closer to the median family income than to the poverty line” (2015). Therefore a family could simply have low to moderate income level, above poverty line, and still be qualified for NSLP. Consequently it is not as simple as stating those who are in poverty get free lunches. In the same article it was stated, “the only problem with these headlines [referring to Klein 2015], and the stories beneath them, is that they aren’t true—not even close. Both pieces were triggered by a report from the Southern Education Foundation”(Devore 2015). Devore was making a statement that not all stories on the media are true. Poverty cannot be directly related to the number of children enrolled in NSLP. Later in the article Devore asks, “So, how does 19.9 percent become 51 percent” (2015)? Klein reported that fifty-one percent of people are living in poverty based on the children in NSLP. Devore reported that statistics show only 19.9 percent of children live in poverty. This can be a common mistake made because specific policies details are not well known by the public. In an article called “Free or reduced price lunch: A proxy for poverty?” the author lists some
According to Karger “NSLP is a federally assisted meal program that served 31 million children in around 100,000 public and nonprofit private schools and residential childcare institutions in 2011” (2014). The schools that participate in this program get money and some supplies in order to compensate for the lunches that free. It is noted that, “the money goes to paying for the program’s 53 workers, supplies, electricity and cleaning materials” (WetzelStaff 2016). There are two types of participants in this program: those who get there lunches for free and those who pay a reduced amount of forty cents per meal (Karger 2014). Another concept to look at is how much a single lunch could mean to a child. In the BBC News article “Your View on School Meals” it …show more content…
Similar to most of the policies that are enforced in this country NSLP is extremely complicated. Generally it is passed off of family income and the amount of people in the family. Devore stated, “The free and reduced lunch program eligibility was $44,123 in 2014—far closer to the median family income than to the poverty line” (2015). Therefore a family could simply have low to moderate income level, above poverty line, and still be qualified for NSLP. Consequently it is not as simple as stating those who are in poverty get free lunches. In the same article it was stated, “the only problem with these headlines [referring to Klein 2015], and the stories beneath them, is that they aren’t true—not even close. Both pieces were triggered by a report from the Southern Education Foundation”(Devore 2015). Devore was making a statement that not all stories on the media are true. Poverty cannot be directly related to the number of children enrolled in NSLP. Later in the article Devore asks, “So, how does 19.9 percent become 51 percent” (2015)? Klein reported that fifty-one percent of people are living in poverty based on the children in NSLP. Devore reported that statistics show only 19.9 percent of children live in poverty. This can be a common mistake made because specific policies details are not well known by the public. In an article called “Free or reduced price lunch: A proxy for poverty?” the author lists some