Out of the mouths of babes

A Utah school district got a lot of negative publicity this week over a problem with school lunches. It seems that some students with a negative balance on their lunch accounts were served lunch, and then a school employee walked over and took those lunches and threw them in the garbage. (Better to feed the trash can than a hungry kid, right?)

I’ve spent a lot of time in public schools. I know a lot of teachers, administrators, and school staff, and I cannot imagine any of them walking up to a hungry child and taking his or her food away. I cannot imagine what kind of person does this. The school staff I know would bend over backwards to help a kid, and many of them do so at their own expense – buying supplies, snacks, working countless hours that never qualify as overtime.

But in this elementary school in Utah, the children were publicly humiliated and perfectly good food was wasted, all because of what again? The district has since apologized, is examining its policies, and responding to the outraged parents. Maybe this will all go down as one big, though humiliating, mistake for these elementary school kids.

But while parents in Utah and across the country were incensed and the media responded with outrage, a much bigger travesty is taking food off the plates of millions of American children. The House of Representatives has passed a farm bill which will cut $800 million a year from the food stamp program (SNAP – supplemental nutrition assistance program).  We are supposed to be glad that the cut isn’t bigger. The Republican-controlled House had wanted to cut is by five times that amount. Apparently we are getting off easy here …

Really?

Because a 2011 study showed that 1 in 4 American children are on food stamps and 75% of families receiving assistance include a child, senior citizen, or disabled adult. That means our Congress – the folks we pay to represent us – are threatening to take food off the plates of 19.9 million children here in the United States.

I don’t know exactly how this will play out, and how many families will see their benefits cut, but I do know this: every parent, teacher, and compassionate adult in America should be as outraged and as LOUD as those parents in Utah. We should demand the same media attention and public outcry for each and every child who goes hungry because of this. Demand that the Senate defeat this bill. Demand that the president veto it. Demand that American children be fed.

Right now, we can see the face of someone who would take away a child’s lunch. It’s the face of John Boehner and the 250 other congressmen who voted for it. But if we allow it, if we don’t raise our voices and demand that our government protect, nurture and feed our children, then we’ll have to look in the mirror too.