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In early August, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law creating the “Healthy School Meals for All Program” to help local school districts pay for the cost of school meals to all students. State lawmakers and school officials say getting the bill signed into law was a step in the right direction, but the state did not allocate any additional money to make the program a reality. In fact, the reimbursement funding level has been flat since the 2008 recession, state Rep. Maurice West II said.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Money is not a problem. Simply take it from the pension funds the Illinois way.
When Old Joe went to Catholic school in the 1960s we had few fat kids (I remember a fat girl) and everybody brown bagged it because there was no cafeteria. We ate at our desks. The only think was a milk machine in the hallway where you bought white milk or chocolate for a nickel. They we went outside and played on the blacktop.
Oops, and we walked to school.
Yup, Old Joe, in my rural downstate school somehow even the poorest parents managed to provide at least a sack lunch for their kids if they could not afford to buy the cafeteria lunch (IIRC a lunch token was a quarter in the early 60’s). For a parent to ask for charity in providing their kid’s school lunch was a real mark of shame, it almost never happened… and yeah, few fat kids…
Milk cartons would be stored in a school kitchenette fridge and right before lunch period a couple of students would fill up the cart and put the milk outside each classroom door.
Free school lunches make kids fact. This is a scientific fact. Do School Lunches Contribute to Childhood Obesity? Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach “This paper assesses whether school lunches contribute to childhood obesity. I employ two methods to isolate the causal impact of school lunches on obesity. First, using panel data, I find that children who consume school lunches are more likely to be obese than those who brown bag their lunches even though they enter kindergarten with the same obesity rates. Second, I leverage the sharp discontinuity in eligibility for reduced-price lunch to compare children just above and just below the… Read more »
Jeez, debtor, didn’t Michelle Obama successfully “address” the issue of “unhealthy” school lunches…???
“For some students, school is the only place where they can access breakfast or lunch throughout the day. The Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit that advocates for solutions to hunger, has pushed for free meals in schools because studies show it improves students’ overall health and increases their academic performance in class and on standardized tests….” Riddle me this: since low – income families qualify for SNAP (food stamps) and also WIC (food program for low – income Women, Infants, and Children), why can’t the families provide a lunch for their kids using these benefits…??? I work in… Read more »
I have the same question.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the income limits does not include the value of child care/subsidized housing/medical/etc. Every state is different but they add up.
https://www.heritage.org/welfare/report/largest-welfare-increase-us-history-will-boost-government-support-76400-poor-family
Illinois in lake and cook are more generous than Walworth county WI. My cousin had their SNAP benefits cut in half moving over the border.
Maybe that’s part of why it’s so hard to find workers there. Labor is in very short supply there.
The answer to the riddle is that parents who know their kid will get free lunch at school will not provide their children with lunch, precisely because they know they will get free lunch at school.
Would you bring your own beer to a Labor Day grill out if your neighbor says he’ll provide the free beer. Isn’t it better to drink Miller Lite for free instead of a Le Jus hazy IPA paid for from you own pocket?
Is there ONE thing this State can do well?? Unbelievable!
Yes. This state and our socialist lords can pass unfunded mandates upon over-taxed residents.