<p>I agree with zoosermom that at many schools, parents are not involved, and often their involvement is actively discouraged. This is not the case in our old school and it does not seem to be the case in Buckeye’s school.</p>
<p>I agree with mythmom that getting kids–all kids–involved in activities would take the sting off getting free food. This could go beyond the buying and distributing I was thinking of earlier.</p>
<p>If this were a regular high school, I’d suggest getting the cooking classes involved. Do they still have cooking classes? </p>
<p>(I never took cooking class in hs, but I remember the treats they used to make and pass out to whoever wanted it…yummmm)</p>
<p>Re: ther garden:
mombot - I agree with you.<br>
“Half our kids are Mexican immigrants who are learning English.”
Sorry, I just have this vision of hungry Mexican kids having to work in a garden so they can eat breakfast. Not cool.
If the children need breakfast, stop with the meetings, flyers, and opportunities for more affluent kids to do good deeds ad infinitum. Buy them bagels, milk and bananas and get on with it.</p>
<p>" Buy them bagels, milk and bananas and get on with it."</p>
<p>Where do you perceive the money coming from? If this is a generally poor school, and we already know it’s non-public, where would the money come from? It seems to me that the point of the thread was to find out how to come up with the money or food to provide, no?</p>
<p>From post#1
“buying the products ourselves”</p>
<p>"From post#1
“buying the products ourselves”</p>
<p>From the same post was a question about fundraising, and I maintain that feeding 200 kids per day, five days a week, will soon get too expensive for “buying the products ourselves” or the generosity of the business community.</p>
<p>There are a lot of underlying issues in this thread. One is the extent to which other people should be responsible, feel responsible, for children who are not fed by their parents (for any reason). While there are both practical & moral aspects of this, my feeling is that any effort on the part of the other families at the school should be noncoercive, strictly voluntary. No family should be directly solicited for “fundraising” unless you know for a fact that those other families are living very comfortable lives. </p>
<p>I actually view this as a gov’t “problem.” A gov’t that provides free education, both to those who are fed and those not fed, should be seeing to it that the bare necessities of learning are there. Thus, a subsidy for "brain food’ for the children there, if means-testing the parents proves that the parents are truly unable to provide that sustenance. However, when gov’t programs are cancelled (apparently in this case), then it should be people not participating in that school’s free education that are solicited. Going back to my post about the portable caterer, I would solicit restaurants & other food establishments to contribute to similar efforts. Not to be a cynic, but this is also a publicity/visibility opportunity for them. For awhile in my area, restaurants have been saving perfectly good (untouched) food for the homeless/hungry – as opposed to watching them go through garbage cans, which really upsets me when I see it. There are all kinds of ways for food establishments to ‘get involved in the community’ in this way, both directly & indirectly (donations).</p>
<p>How about supplying something easy and nutritious like peanut butter, jelly and bread, and having that available in the GC’s office or elsewhere that the students can discretly access? That food would be easy and not messy. Perhaps a local civic organization would be willing to supply it.</p>
<p>In my city, a college town with many highly educated, solidly middle class people, there is an elementary school where the school with the help of civic groups provides underwear to students who need it. The school of 800 students hands out at least 1,000 pairs of underwear a year. Students who need underwear can get a pair in the GC’s office.</p>