Public Employee Press

Union joins drive for FREE lunch for all students

By ALFREDO ALVARADO

District Council 37 is working with a coalition of food advocates and elected officials who are urging the city's public school system to provide lunch free for all students.

"When children are hungry they are less likely to learn. Every student should be guaranteed access to healthy food during the school day," said Public Advocate Letitia James, who is playing a leadership role in the free lunch for all drive and announced the initiative March 11 at a City Hall news conference.

More than 75 percent of New York City public school students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, an estimated 780,000 students. But 250,000 children who are eligible for free lunch don't take advantage of the program, often because children who are not paying get their meals in a separate line and suffer the embarrassment of being identified as poor in front of their classmates.

"We have to end this class system and treat all schoolchildren equally," said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts.

Members of DC 37's Local 372 prepare the food served in city schools and work in support service jobs throughout the public education system.

"Our members see every day on the job that children who don't get enough to eat have a hard time concentrating on their schoolwork," said Local 372 President Santos Crespo Jr. "Universal free lunch would eliminate the stigma that keeps some kids from getting the free lunch they are entitled to."

Making lunch free for all students would also end the problem faced by some immigrant families who are reluctant to file the paperwork required for their children to get lunch free under the current system.

Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Poughkeepsie and Hempstead and 400 schools in Manhattan and the Bronx already offer universal free lunch. "This is long overdue for our whole system," Crespo said.

The plan would cost an estimated $20 million - less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the city's $25 billion-a-year school budget. If it raises school lunch participation by 20 percent, the city would receive $59 million more in federal and state aid. After the Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing & Visual Arts on West 114th Street in Manhattan made lunch free, student participation soared from 30 percent to 90 percent.

Talks are under way with the federal government in an effort to eliminate an impediment to the plan - current policies that tie Title I school aid to free-lunch eligibility forms and could cut the funding without the paperwork.

Dept. of Education Chancellor Carmen Farina has endorsed the initiative, and James and other City Council members are urging Mayor Bill de Blasio to include the $20 million to fund the program in the DOE budget.

"We don't ask families to pay for their kids' education, school buses or textbooks, and we shouldn't ask them to pay for their lunch," said City Council member Ben Kallos.