A Conservative Solution to The Public School Lunch Circular Firing Squad

Federal mandates made school lunches cost more and forced foods into them most kids don’t care for so the Derry School District Lunch program is pondering why overall receipts are down.

“The food service numbers are significantly less on student sales,” Simard said. She said the food services department is still working to determine the cause and whether it is the result of new meal plans and food choices required under state and federal reimbursement guidelines.

She knows why, she is just being diplomatic.  The Feds have made lunch cost more.  They have made the cost of providing lunch cost more.  They have simultaneously required foods that a majority of the target hot lunch customer base does not enjoy while making foods they do less accessible or unavailable.  The end result is more cost for less benefit.

This particular reporting in Derry NH (NH Union Leader) tells the same sad tale.

“There’s quite a bit of waste.”

To get reimbursed the district must sell a full meal which includes things many students will not eat.

The district has to wait to get reimbursed.

The district can get additional reimbursements if they comply with USDA guidelines…“We are trying to comply with the program so we can generate the additional revenue.”

So follow me here.  One set of bureaucrats imposes guidelines that make meals cost more, composed of things kids wont eat, so that local bureaucrats can chase revenue that they have to wait for, all because someone in a far away place, wanted to put “I fixed school lunches” on their political resume.

But they didn’t fix them.  They broke them.

So here’s an idea.  I know, it’s crazy.  Fire all those people.  Eliminate all those mandates and reimbursements, and the bureaucrats needed to write, impose, and manage them.   Instead, let local district food service managers create meal plans with foods their kids will buy and may actually eat, at prices they might be willing to pay, in relation to the actual cost required to deliver them, because they were not artificially inflated by the bureaucrats we no longer need, or include foods that cost too much–but that bureaucrats require–that no one wants, and will only get thrown out.

Is this too simple?

This is, by the way, an example of what I mean when I say we need “small government” and “local control.”

If I only said that the USDA school lunch program is a waste of taxpayer dollars and would be better manged without the Feds in the middle, more than a few Democrats might see that as an opportunity to suggest that I want to make kids go hungry or end funding for free or supplemental lunches.   They say the same thing when you declare that the 72 billion we spend annually on the department of education is a waste–which it is.)  But they are not even close.  What we are doing now, thanks to the feds, is spending more, wasting more, and leaving kids hungry.

What I have outlined is Conservative thinking at its finest.  It saves everyone money and frustration.  My plan empowers local people to make local decisions at a fraction of the cost, with a fraction of the waste, with price points that might well make hot lunch affordable to a wider range of kids, reducing the cost of free or supplemental lunches, freeing up local revenue to pay for kids who actually need free lunches, that may end up inside stomachs instead of trash barrels,  leading to less waste and less hunger, more fed and attentive students, and millions less wasted on a tangle of pointless paper-pushers and man hours exhausted on chasing down reimbursements or cataloging what ended up in the waste bin.  It also places the decision making process as close to the people affected as possible.  People who can make decisions about who in their community actually needs help and how best to provide it.

And by the way, what good is a free lunch no kid wants to eat?

The Conservative position is that local residents know best whom to elect and to appoint, who is most qualified to then hire competent local mangers, who can then run their local school lunch programs effectively, without the need for leviathan government standing over them.  The goal is to provide a decent, affordable meal kids will eat so they are not distracted by hunger, and to provide adequate compensation to those we have empowered to that end.

The alternative (the bizarro world version of how to deliver a lunch) is what we have now.  Federal mandates that strangle everyone, drive up prices, and increase the cost of running a program that provides food no one wants, in exchange for wasting even more of our program mangers time, chasing down the chimera of “reimbursements” to cover costs that only exist because of the mandates themselves.

Remove all of that and people are paying for food they want at a price they agree to, that covers the cost to provide it, without any additional transactions outside the place in which the product and service were provided.

Cost effective, local control, that is limited to only that which is required to achieve the desired goal.  That is a conservative ideal.  It is sometimes (also) a Republican idea.  And let’s be perfectly honest–it is a common sense idea that eliminates all the problems and spends less doing it.

School lunches are getting more expensive.  We are seeing fewer people buying them and those that do waste much of what they pay for.  Kids are going hungry.  Administrators are being forced to waste time and money chasing paperwork.  And it will only get worse.  How is any of that good for our kids?

I would encourage New Hampshire legislators, including Democrats,  to craft legislation that excludes us from this federal bureaucratic maze of nonsense and that returns local control to districts, school lunch managers, and the parents they all answer to.  The end result would be local control, more affordable choices, decent food kids and parents are willing to pay for, and less wasted time and effort.

The left likes to talk about sensible bi-partisan solutions that solve problems.  Here you go.  Have at it.

You are reading  "A Conservative Solution to The Public School Lunch Circular Firing Squad"   by  Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com (Home)

Federal Mandate Drives Up School Lunch Prices in Merrimack NH

Who says there is no such thing as a free lunch.  And it wont be just Merrimack, New Hampshire.  The Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010 Federal mandate essentially implemented price controls everywhere School lunch is served to fund free lunch, based on federal guidelines, decided on for everyone, by a few hundred Democrats, in Washington DC, in the historically significant later part of 2010.

The Democrat Congress put the USDA on point for this program, and empowered them to manage the new federal programs under the premise that it can eliminate hunger and improve nutrition.  But at the end of the day this is little more than Federal meddling, income redistribution (again), and  using the promise of federal grants and support  to turn your public school lunch program into  a taxpayer powered soup kitchen.

And not just any soup kitchen.  A soup kitchen that has to jump through hoops if it wants to please the Federal Bureaucrats empowered to decide who is worthy of what handouts and if local taxpayers must pony up to meet the federal requirements.

One of those retirements is that schools start charging students (parents) more for each lunch purchased (during a recession),  to satisfy the mandated price defined by the legislation, regardless of how much the lunch actually costs.  Yes, the Feds are telling local school districts across the Fruited Plain what they must charge for a school lunch; whatever cost reimbursement amount the feds are willing to provide for a free lunch, regardless of what it costs us to sell a lunch to a paying student.

The goal of the legislation is to give away more free lunches.  And you had better give away those free lunches. There appear to be incentives for districts that optimize their lunch give-aways based on federal eligibility standards defined by the DC bureaucrats.  So if the feds say you should be giving away ‘x’ number of free lunches based on the federal data for your district, regardless of whether anyone needs or wants them, you will fair better in the eyes of ‘The Secretary” if you can find them all and get them to opt in to the new taxpayer funded free school lunch welfare program.

Lunch Welfare by force.  That doesn’t sound socialistic at all, does it?

Over in Merrimack (as reported by Kimberly Houghton/Union Leader) it sounds like this.

Matt Shevenell, business administrator, said the price hike is in response to the Healthy Free Kids Act of 2010, a federal mandate to increase lunch prices so that revenues match reimbursements provided for free and reduced lunches.

The new law requires school districts within the next few years to charge the same amount as federal lunch subsidies.

Lovely.

The synopsis of Section 205 of the actual bill that price increase part sound like this.

Establishes requirements regarding the nonfederal contribution required of school food authorities receiving federal reimbursement through the school lunch program. Requires food authorities that have an average paid lunch price that is less than the difference between the free lunch reimbursement rate and the paid lunch reimbursement rate to set their average paid lunch price eventually so that the total per meal revenue received for those lunches is equal to the per meal revenue provided by the federal government for free lunches. Sets forth the formula for setting the average price for paid meals. Requires school food authorities that have an average paid lunch price equal to or greater than the difference between the free lunch reimbursement rate and the paid lunch reimbursement rate to adjust their prices annually by the inflation adjustment factor used for federal reimbursement rates. Allows a school food authority to reduce the average paid lunch price if the state ensures that nonfederal funding is added to the nonprofit school food service account of the food authority to satisfy the requirements of this section.

There are breakfast bailouts if you start a school breakfast program (free breakfast! until the Federal money dries up or departs), subject no doubt to your ability to maximize participation in the free lunch program, and even bailouts for day care and adult programs.

The bill passed the Democrat Senate in early August 2010, then sat in hiding until early December 2010, when Democrats were ramming through lame-duck wish list bills after their humiliating November defeat.  Obama signed it as fast as he could.

If it is not obvious, I do not approve, even though my kids have been eligible for free or reduced lunch for as long as I have had kids.  And no, I have never used the program because I simply do not need it–my kids bag lunch-it or pay regular price for hot lunch.  Despite what the government says we are ligible for.

S. 3307 is just a power grab that federalizes lunch, complete with the hoops, loops, ass-kissing, report filing, administrative state expanding, bureaucrat paying, income redistributing BS, of which the weight of expense and responsibility will inevitably fall on local governments who–for a fraction of the cost now (in most cases)–could have, or already have, dealt more than adequately with their own local situation.

But that’s not good enough.  We have to increases the cost for a school lunch, over what it actually costs, becasue the Federal government said we must. (It is the law.)  And if we don’t spend it and the bureaucrats at the USDA don’t mandate its use in other ways–which is always possible, it probably becomes another slush fund worthy of fraud and abuse.  Lord knows we need more of those.

USDA Program Link

GOVTrack S. 3307 synopsis

You are reading "Federal Mandate Drives up Local School Lunch Prices"  by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.(Home)

New Hampshire’s SAU 21 Hooked A Double-Dipper

by Steve MacDonald 

Meet Robert M. Sullivan.  Mr Sullivan, at the age of 58 ( I believe),  ‘retired’ as the Superintendent of the Middleboro Massachusetts School District, where he was earning 128,000.00 per year.  But like many “retired” public school superintendents, he didn’t stay retired for very long.  He’s currently the Superintendent for the six schools that make up SAU #21 in  New Hampshire. (Hampton Falls, North and South Hampton, Seabrook and Winnacunnet Co-op.)

But he’s retired!

“Retired?” Retired, to a Superintendent means you have a new job lined up before you leave the job you retired from, which the retiring Sullivan did.  But while Mr. Sullivan is working in the Granite State he isn’t moving to New Hampshire permanently.  He and his wife are staying in Massachusetts.  Why?

…the out-of-state job will enable Robert M. Sullivan to collect his full Massachusetts pension, estimated to be in the range of $70,000 to $85,000, while also being paid for his new position.

So Superintendent Sullivan ‘retired’ so he could double-dip, collecting a $70,000.00 to $85,000.00 per year pension from the taxpayers in Massachusetts, while collecting a generous salary in New Hampshire? (I have not identified Sullivan’s SAU 21 compensation, but the national average is around $160,000.00 per year, and the man he is replacing earned $126,000.00 so his new wage is probably…’adequate.’)

Mrs. Sullivan is probably doing rather well.  She is still a teacher and coach in Middleboro, so things are probably comfortable.  Comfortable enough so that when Bob says he would like a “second residence” in New Hampshire to avoid a “difficult daily commute,” that this would not be a huge burden on them.  Just hope no one registers to vote from that address.

So Double-Dipping is good work if you can get it, yes?   Here is a man who is probably more than qualified to do the job at SAU21.  I don’t doubt that.  And he is certainly young enough to do it for a number of years and probably be very effective.  And yet somehow, while still in the prime of his life, at what could turn out to be his peak earning years,  he could be making close to three times the national average in income per year from one school ditrict while simultaneously taking a pension almost double the national annual income on top of that from another, because he was allowed to ‘retire” from his other taxpayer funded job–and collect his substantial pension–long before he should have been able to.

Don’t you wish you could retire at 58 and start collecting $70-85K a year for the rest of your life–plus some walking around money from a side job that pays  a lot more?  And people wonder why public sector pensions are in distress, running deficits in the billions?  People wonder why taxpayers get a bit grumpy when public sector workers cry about raises, or complain about having to pay for more of their own pensions or benefits.   This is why!

Now I think everyone who is able should be Working to support themselves or their family.  Earning what you are worth is between you, and your employer, and no one else.  But burying taxpayers in billions in pensions and benefits package benefits that will pay out sums that most of those taxpayers will never ever see for themselves in actual wages, is a path that leads to the bursting of the public pension bubble.  Sure, it may not affect most public employees well along in their careers, but someone in the not so distant future is going to get screwed.

What  the up and coming career public employees need to understand is that the unions really don’t care or they’d be writing contracts that deflate the bubble now.   The majority of existing public employees, union or not, don’t seem to care either because if they did, they’d be pitching a lot more into their own benefits and pensions or voting for contracts that deflate that bubble faster to secure some kind of pension for future state workers.   But is  not what we appear to have.  While we are picking at the edges during a down economy, all abut a few are hoping someting happens to make the problem go away.  But the only thing that will do that on this trajectory is when someone says, yeah, I know you put x number of years in, but there’s no money.   That means no pensions, slash and burn layoffs, and all those people whose protection or education demanded higher wages or larger benefit plans–they’re all screwed too.

They will suffer because people who went before them took $80,000 dollar per year (or more) pensions while still more than able to earn as much or more than that, sometimes for ten, fifteen or even twenty years.  That is not what the pension was meant for.  And it has to stop.

This is not, by the way, the fault of Bob Sullivan.   I do not begrudge him his pension windfall.   He is just following the “rules.”   But wouldn’t it look a lot better if he could let someone who hadn’t retired on a decent pension get a shot at improving their career instead of improving his own after he retired on a wage most Americans will never see in their lifetimes?  Is there no sense of guilt at screwing taxpayers in Massachusetts out so much in a pension, for so many years, while being able bodied enough to cross the border and earn even more on top of that, doing the exact same job, someplace else?

Mr. Sullivan is not alone.  There are more than a few such superintendents in New Hampshire right now, doing the same thing.  And yes, we are going to talk about them as well.

You are reading "NH SAU 21 Hooks a Double Dipper"  by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com.(Home)

Money Not So Well Spent – 71% of NH Schools Fail to Meet Adequate Yearly Progress

by Steve MacDonald

Hat tip to NH Watchdog first and foremost, for reporting this story.

(CONCORD) 71% of New Hampshire schools failed to meet improvement benchmarks in the latest annual progress reports released today by the New Hampshire Department of Education. Over 66% of New Hampshire school districts failed to make the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is either reading or math.

I felt an immediate urge, compelled perhaps, to see how well SAU 26 did.  Merrimack failed to meet AYP in both reading and math.  If I’m not mistaken this is not the first time we’ve been on the wrong side of the results.  But hey!  We met the attendance and graduation requirements.  So does that mean the kids are showing up, not learning enough, and then getting pushed through the system anyway no matter what teachers think?  I bet it does. And maybe we’ll get some Jedi mind-trick action for good measure.

“These are not the progress results you are looking for.”

And as I understand it, these ratings are based on NECAP exams, which set an incredibly low bar to begin with.

Educational experts my ass.  So when do we close up the NH Department of Education?  They clearly serve no useful purpose.

Feel free to look up your own results and share them in the comments.

PDF- NH 2011-2012 AYP results

Image credit www.dreamstime.com

You are reading Money not so well spent by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com. (Home)

What Education Is About

Thanks to Ann Marie Banfield, Grok contributor at large, for posting this link on Facebook.  It is a letter  to the editor, in the Hollis -Brookline Journal, that needs no further exposition on my part:

School’s function is education

Friday, April 15, 2011

To the Editor:

I recently came across a draft of the SAU 41mission statement. It read like a United Nations charter for global childhood education. There were references to a global society, to a world community, to environmental initiatives, and to philanthropic activity. The students apparently will become stewards of the environment and will appreciate diversity and complexity.

Although training good global citizens is, of course, an admirable goal, I would be more impressed if there had been more emphasis on academics. Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe that a school’s primary function is the education of its students, not the development of global citizens.

I would suggest that students first learn to be good American citizens, and the first lesson should be why they are so blest (sic) to live in this country. In a world full of war, poverty, and starvation, only a relative handful of nations enjoy freedom and prosperity. The United States has enjoyed more freedom and prosperity than any other nation in the history of the world. Millions of people have come to our nation to live a better life, and no other nation has attracted anywhere near the immigrants that we have. Students should understand the reasons why.

Our success derives from our adherence to the Constitution and to capitalism. The prosperous nations around the world are those who have adopted capitalism. The Constitution is unique among world documents in that it guarantees our citizens individual freedoms and liberties. I know that this may not sit well with people more interested in developing global students, but students need to first be stewards of the Constitution and of capitalism. Only then will their special role in the world be clear: to continue to be a shining beacon of hope and encouragement for people living in less fortunate nations.

ALFRED F. CHASE JR.

Hollis

H/T Ann Marie Banfield