On Data Collection, Or, Help Us Learn More About "Alternate Lunch"

Regular readers will know that this is the third in a series of stories that have addressed the practice of serving “alternate lunches” to students whose parents owe the school for lunch money.
For those who are seeing this series for the first time, a quick recap:

From On Teaching Debt Collection To Kids, Or, Here’s The Outrage Of The Week:
“...One form of “lost dollars” has historically been the money owed by parents for school lunches that are essentially provided “on credit”. Basically what happens is a kid might forget his lunch money that day...and the school covers the money until they can collect the debt...

...With that in mind, it’s no surprise that schools would look for ever-more-creative ways to collect debts; but even considering all that I found myself shocked by this LA Times article entitled: “On school menus: cheese sandwiches, parental debt”...

...If a parent owes the district more than $5 in meal money...the district will basically...repossess lunch...

...Picture two second-graders in the cafeteria line. As they get to the yummy pizza, the first little girl gets her slice of pepperoni. But not the second girl. She gets a cheese sandwich. That’s right-this school district, and numerous others nationwide, have special school lunch “options” for those students who have parents that owe money-and in Calloway County, Kentucky, it only takes $3.00”

To make things worse, the story discusses the practice of finding nutritious, but unappetizing, foods that can be offered to the kids to shame them into getting the money from their parents.

Additionally, the story pointed to several independent sources that suggest using food as a tool for debt collection in the lunchroom is counteracting the lessons taught right down the hall in the classrooms by the USDA’s “Team Nutrition” program-a $500 million dollar annual investment in grants and other aid used by virtually all school districts to teach our kids healthier eating habits.

Of course, there’s a lot more than $500 million at stake-heart attack, stroke, and diabetes are all frequently traced to unhealthy diet, and the cost of those disorders runs into the tens, and perhaps hundreds, of billions of dollars annually.

Part two of the story (On Facts And Figures, Or, Over 187 Billion Served) is a dollars and cents, facts and figures kind of story-where the funding for school meals (more or less $37 billion) comes from, and where it goes, how many kids are served (about 9 million daily), and lots more detailed number crunching.

Did you know the School Lunch Program was not started out of an interest in serving America’s poor? Did you know it was originally conceived because of National Security concerns? That was also some of the ground we covered in part two; as well as the often unrecognized relationship between the Program and the Black Panthers.

We also talked about our desire to create a survey that you, the reader, might administer to your local school districts so that a national perspective might be obtained.

Finally, it was announced that the parents that are at the heart of all of this have contacted me, that they have created an email address (ForAllTheKids@gmail.com); and that they would enjoy your messages of support.
Having thus dealt with the old business; let us now move on to new business.


First, “informed sources” tell me that Fabian Nuñez, the Speaker of the California State Assembly, has become aware of this issue and may be investigating the problem in the near future. (To get an idea about where the Speaker stands on these sorts of issues, check out the video of the Speaker and Michael Moore discussing “Sicko” at its US premiere.)

To help get the ball rolling, I’d like to ask the community to take a second and encourage the Speaker with a quick email (use the “Contact the Speaker” link at the very bottom right corner or bottom center of the page) complimenting him on this interest and maybe even pointing out that he’s a generally nice guy-which, from a distance, he seems to be. (For purposes of disclosure, Nuñez is associated with the Hilary Clinton campaign.)

Next, we have a survey...in fact, we have two. More about that in a minute.

But before we put up the surveys, I want to talk about the options for returning the results.

The survey will be on this page-so you can copy and paste the version you want to use; and then either print the questions or copy them to a digital device, like a phone, BlackBerry or PDA.

If you are text-savvy, the results won’t need to be typed-but for the rest of us, we have two ways to avoid the typing process after the survey is completed.

One is to fax the results to the parents at (206) 312-1612.

The other option is a little different, and I’ll take a second to walk through what you do
.
There is a website in India called NowPos (NowPossible...) that allows you to create voice emails using a microphone attached to your computer; and this will allow you to “dictate” the results, and then send that email to the ForAllTheKids@gmail.com address. You’ll have to create an account to do this, but there is no charge for the service.

And finally, we discuss the surveys.

Basically what we are trying to do is get the “nuts and bolts” of how local districts treat the “alternate lunch” question and information about Federal meal reimbursement. There are also a series of questions that focus on whether Districts employ an outside contractor to manage their foodservice programs.

There are two versions of the survey, a 52 question version, and a 26 question version. It is estimated that the longer version will take about 30 to 45 minutes to complete, but the shorter version will provide the most basic information if a respondent is reluctant to offer that much time.

We encourage you to direct the survey to a School District’s food service director-alternatively, an assistant superintendent or other similar manager should be able to answer many of these questions. To quote from the survey itself:

“To begin, call your school district child nutrition service office or food service office and ask to speak with someone familiar with the process for handling past due payments on student meal accounts.”

The parents would also like to be informed if a District refuses to complete the survey. In that event, please send an email to the ForAllTheKids@gmail.com address with the details.

Because of issues realted to how this site formats text, I was not able to add the larger spaces required between questions for "Other" responses, and I apologize to the community in advance for this inability. I suggest using a seperate page or the back of the survey you've printed for those responses.

by Fake Consultant (http://fakeconsultant.blogspot.com (Advice From A Fake Consultant)

(Editor's note: Either survey can be obtained in fake consultant's original post, or by request to DonVila@aol.com )