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Pertaining to that observation, I really liked this section: > In 2022, California became the first of a half dozen or so states to offer free school meals to

Pertaining to that observation, I really liked this section: > In 2022, California became the first of a half dozen or so states to offer free school meals to all students, regardless of family income. Dillard supports free meals for all students with an emphatic, “Yes, yes, yes!” Food should not be based on income, she says: “It should be part of the school day. Your transportation is of no charge to students. School books are no charge to students. School lunch should be of no charge to students. … It’s just the right thing to do.” On one hand, that seems like an excellent argument to use for free school lunches. On the other hand, it feels like school busses are like libraries, accidents of history out of step with the modern world. If this became a rallying cry there'd probably be a strong pushback to start charging kids to be taken to school.

tstrimple 11mo ago
Imagine the conservative backlash to the concept of libraries if they hadn’t grown up with them. The panic and hysteria they would generate over the idea that people could access books without paying for them! Communism! You’re making authors into slaves!
- ryandrake 11mo ago
  Or, some goofball centrist would say "Good idea, but why shouldn't we charge people and make them profitable?? Government should be run like a business!"
michaelrpeskin 11mo ago
We did "free" lunch for all here a couple of years ago. The idea is great, execution is terrible. You can't get a la carte free, only the full "FDA approved" lunch is free. So if you forget a drink, or just want to add a snack to your own packed lunch, you go get the whole thing and throw everything else away. The elementary school tried adding the "share table" where you can put anything you don't want so that someone else could pick it up, but that was shut down because they could assure the feds that everyone was getting a "balanced" lunch. My highschooler tells me of all the kids going through line multiple times to get pizza on pizza day and then throwing the rest away because they don't want that. Of course we had a second tax that was approved this year because the free lunches were more expensive than they had planned. Wonder why.
- 64756salad638 11mo ago
  If you wouldn’t mind sharing, what school district was this? I’m curious to research and learn more! What accounts for the budget overrun? Are there stats on how many free meals were taken per student (especially if this was broken down on a per-day basis, this could back up the “pizza” explanation)?
- Spivak 11mo ago
  I mean this is the nanny state at its best. Getting in the way of progress because you refuse to meet people, in this case kids, where they actually are. The challenge should be minimizing the amount of waste—cook literally anything where the kids will clean their plates then try to nudge toward healthier options while keeping your waste % low. Let them take any subset of the lunch as they please, prune dishes kids either don't take or leave behind until you have a menu. Mind boggling how getting the kids actually fed is lower on the priority list than making sure they eat the "right" things.
  - pxc 11mo ago
    Agreed, though the term makes for a funny metaphor in this case— a good nanny would likely take the same approach you describe here: meeting the kids where they're at and trying to encourage them to eat better along the way instead of making food just for it to be thrown away.
  - somerandomqaguy 11mo ago
    Not exactly easy. The US military (hell just about every army on the planet) spends a lot of money and effort into developing field rations that are palatable enough for infantry sections on the move to eat in it's entirety. I can't imagine developing it for far more numerous school children is going to be any easier.
    - thaumasiotes 11mo ago
      > The US military (hell just about every army on the planet) spends a lot of money and effort into developing field rations that are palatable enough for infantry sections on the move to eat in it's entirety. Why? That's not even a real concept. If you want everyone to like everything they have, you can't do that without letting them trade away the stuff they hate.
devonbleak 11mo ago
As someone who lives near a school I can say school buses are very much a necessity and they are getting modernized. I see an electric one consistently going through the neighborhood. And I much prefer them to hundreds more cars or pedestrians going through the neighborhood (people drive like maniacs through the residential streets here).
supportengineer 11mo ago
In California where I live there's no school buses. You're on your own to get to school, fortunately there are so many neighborhood schools that almost everyone can walk. I love that my tax dollars are being used to feed kids at school.
jimbokun 11mo ago
Today, libraries are more amazing and more necessary than ever. With online services constantly changing what is or isn't available, having a library with physical media, books, and even their own services for borrowing audio books and other online media, can be a real asset when trying to watch a specific movie or TV show or listen to a particular song the streamers decided to stop offering, or moved to a different service you're not subscribed to, etc.
- HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago
  For getting media made inaccessible, you could just do what all those many countries around the world without good public libraries do: pirate it. Talk to anyone serious about cinema as an art form in Eastern Europe or the developing world, and Bittorrent was their school, not a library or a paid streaming platform. In any event, I agree that public libraries are good, but it is easy to see that momentum in the USA for sustaining them has slowed: on American-dominated forums people often view public libraries nowadays as a place for the smelly homeless to hang out, look at porn, and possibly shoot up.
  - i80and 11mo ago
    > on American-dominated forums people often view public libraries nowadays as a place for the smelly homeless to hang out, look at porn, and possibly shoot up. I think this says far more about your specific forum bubbles than anything else, to be honest. At worst I see a perception that libraries are for children.
    - HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago
      If you do a DDG search site:news.ycombinator.com "libraries" "homeless", you find some such discussions from this very site. But as I said, you can also find this across the internet when forums are dominated by Americans and it’s certainly not limited to obscure and dodgy venues. I suppose it is the big-city Americans who are complaining about the social problems. But it’s also common to see from small-town Americans that opening hours at their local library have been slashed, which also speaks to declining support for them.
HeyLaughingBoy 11mo ago
It seems odd to me that anyone would need an argument in favor of free school lunch. School is mandatory between certain ages and it's free. Let's just make meals free as well. And I'm not sure how school buses are out of step with "the modern world." What are you proposing? Uber or something? For the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we sure seem to spend a lot of time discussing why we shouldn't spend money on social causes.
- carlosjobim 11mo ago
  The argument would be that parents have an obligation to feed their children. That's the least you could expect of them.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 11mo ago
    Awesome. And as for the ones who are not able to for some reason that you apparently can't comprehend, what do you propose?
    - carlosjobim 10mo ago
      What happens in reality in those cases?
JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
> school busses are like libraries I’m reading a book from my county library right now. They also have a library of things, which means I can borrow e.g. a sewing machine or laminator, as well as an area where we can use a laser cutter, 3D printer and soon, a micro mill, all for free. (You bring your own materials.) Whenever I’m in there it’s packed with adults and students. They also have a terrific lecture series, the most recent of which was by a local homebuilder describing new bioconcretes she’s been using.

tstrimple 11mo ago

Imagine the conservative backlash to the concept of libraries if they hadn’t grown up with them. The panic and hysteria they would generate over the idea that people could access books without paying for them! Communism! You’re making authors into slaves!

ryandrake 11mo ago
Or, some goofball centrist would say "Good idea, but why shouldn't we charge people and make them profitable?? Government should be run like a business!"

michaelrpeskin 11mo ago

We did "free" lunch for all here a couple of years ago. The idea is great, execution is terrible. You can't get a la carte free, only the full "FDA approved" lunch is free. So if you forget a drink, or just want to add a snack to your own packed lunch, you go get the whole thing and throw everything else away. The elementary school tried adding the "share table" where you can put anything you don't want so that someone else could pick it up, but that was shut down because they could assure the feds that everyone was getting a "balanced" lunch. My highschooler tells me of all the kids going through line multiple times to get pizza on pizza day and then throwing the rest away because they don't want that. Of course we had a second tax that was approved this year because the free lunches were more expensive than they had planned. Wonder why.

64756salad638 11mo ago
If you wouldn’t mind sharing, what school district was this? I’m curious to research and learn more! What accounts for the budget overrun? Are there stats on how many free meals were taken per student (especially if this was broken down on a per-day basis, this could back up the “pizza” explanation)?
Spivak 11mo ago
I mean this is the nanny state at its best. Getting in the way of progress because you refuse to meet people, in this case kids, where they actually are. The challenge should be minimizing the amount of waste—cook literally anything where the kids will clean their plates then try to nudge toward healthier options while keeping your waste % low. Let them take any subset of the lunch as they please, prune dishes kids either don't take or leave behind until you have a menu. Mind boggling how getting the kids actually fed is lower on the priority list than making sure they eat the "right" things.
- pxc 11mo ago
  Agreed, though the term makes for a funny metaphor in this case— a good nanny would likely take the same approach you describe here: meeting the kids where they're at and trying to encourage them to eat better along the way instead of making food just for it to be thrown away.
- somerandomqaguy 11mo ago
  Not exactly easy. The US military (hell just about every army on the planet) spends a lot of money and effort into developing field rations that are palatable enough for infantry sections on the move to eat in it's entirety. I can't imagine developing it for far more numerous school children is going to be any easier.
  - thaumasiotes 11mo ago
    > The US military (hell just about every army on the planet) spends a lot of money and effort into developing field rations that are palatable enough for infantry sections on the move to eat in it's entirety. Why? That's not even a real concept. If you want everyone to like everything they have, you can't do that without letting them trade away the stuff they hate.

devonbleak 11mo ago

As someone who lives near a school I can say school buses are very much a necessity and they are getting modernized. I see an electric one consistently going through the neighborhood. And I much prefer them to hundreds more cars or pedestrians going through the neighborhood (people drive like maniacs through the residential streets here).

supportengineer 11mo ago

In California where I live there's no school buses. You're on your own to get to school, fortunately there are so many neighborhood schools that almost everyone can walk. I love that my tax dollars are being used to feed kids at school.

jimbokun 11mo ago

Today, libraries are more amazing and more necessary than ever. With online services constantly changing what is or isn't available, having a library with physical media, books, and even their own services for borrowing audio books and other online media, can be a real asset when trying to watch a specific movie or TV show or listen to a particular song the streamers decided to stop offering, or moved to a different service you're not subscribed to, etc.

HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago
For getting media made inaccessible, you could just do what all those many countries around the world without good public libraries do: pirate it. Talk to anyone serious about cinema as an art form in Eastern Europe or the developing world, and Bittorrent was their school, not a library or a paid streaming platform. In any event, I agree that public libraries are good, but it is easy to see that momentum in the USA for sustaining them has slowed: on American-dominated forums people often view public libraries nowadays as a place for the smelly homeless to hang out, look at porn, and possibly shoot up.
- i80and 11mo ago
  > on American-dominated forums people often view public libraries nowadays as a place for the smelly homeless to hang out, look at porn, and possibly shoot up. I think this says far more about your specific forum bubbles than anything else, to be honest. At worst I see a perception that libraries are for children.
  - HeinzStuckeIt 11mo ago
    If you do a DDG search site:news.ycombinator.com "libraries" "homeless", you find some such discussions from this very site. But as I said, you can also find this across the internet when forums are dominated by Americans and it’s certainly not limited to obscure and dodgy venues. I suppose it is the big-city Americans who are complaining about the social problems. But it’s also common to see from small-town Americans that opening hours at their local library have been slashed, which also speaks to declining support for them.

HeyLaughingBoy 11mo ago

It seems odd to me that anyone would need an argument in favor of free school lunch. School is mandatory between certain ages and it's free. Let's just make meals free as well. And I'm not sure how school buses are out of step with "the modern world." What are you proposing? Uber or something? For the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we sure seem to spend a lot of time discussing why we shouldn't spend money on social causes.

carlosjobim 11mo ago
The argument would be that parents have an obligation to feed their children. That's the least you could expect of them.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11mo ago
  Awesome. And as for the ones who are not able to for some reason that you apparently can't comprehend, what do you propose?
  - carlosjobim 10mo ago
    What happens in reality in those cases?

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago

> school busses are like libraries I’m reading a book from my county library right now. They also have a library of things, which means I can borrow e.g. a sewing machine or laminator, as well as an area where we can use a laser cutter, 3D printer and soon, a micro mill, all for free. (You bring your own materials.) Whenever I’m in there it’s packed with adults and students. They also have a terrific lecture series, the most recent of which was by a local homebuilder describing new bioconcretes she’s been using.