Well, you may have already heard today that the unions and LAUSD have reached an agreeement to cut some days from the school year to save money. 5 days of unpaid furlough by teachers this year and 7 days next year should save about a third of what's needed to help things.
There's a different angle to the story presented here by the NBC News blog, http://www.nbclosangeles.com/
"The Budget Crisis Affects Teachers' Pockets and Students' Plates -Teachers and students continue to suffer under the latest budget cuts." By JOHN ADAMS ,Updated 2:30 PM PDT, Sat, Mar 27, 2010.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local-beat/The-School-Budget-Crisis-Affects-Teachers-Pockets-and-Students-Plates-89331357.html
The food in school is not considered by most to be any kind of fine dining experience but it does the job for many students in keeping their nutrition up. The story here is about those who rely on the school to fill a big part of their food requirements, but the concern over cutting back by 5 days between now and July and coming up short for 7 days between September and June in hte next school year may be overstating the case just a bit.
If there were not so many instances of students wasting food, there might be more sympathy here. However, the observations may vary from school to school and among elementary, middle and high schools. Too many times people, myself included, have seen food wasted and maybe that's because it's free for most all of the cases, at least at Lincoln when I was there, as a teacher, not as a student- that was an entirely different experience. A nominal fee of anything 25 or 50 cents even, might get people to take things for granted less- whenever you have to pay anything, the tendency is give that more attention. But any price charged, like that what-if, is not allowed and left over food, if it's still the case, cannot be saved or re-distributed- they are afraid people will steal the food, saying it's leftover. At least that's what I was led to believe.
In the story, there are some who just want to eat and you have to wonder what can be done to adjust the picture when breakfast cereal, for example, is not that expensive. You might want steak and eggs but it looks like Cheerios and milk with some fruit would take care of things-and this would be for those days OUT of school. Well, read the story and think of what solutions may come to mind. And all this still does not assure a good education in LAUSD.
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