Although Francisco Velazquez, a 14-year-old freshman with spiky hair and sunglasses, qualifies for a free lunch at Balboa High School here, he was not eating.He scanned the picnic table full of his friends in a school courtyard one day a few weeks ago, and said, “I’m not hungry.”
On another day, a group of classmates who also qualify for federally subsidized lunches sat on a bench. One ate a slice of pizza from the line where students pay for food; the rest went without.
Lunchtime “is the best time to impress your peers,” said Lewis Geist, a senior at Balboa and its student body president. Being seen with a subsidized meal, he said, “lowers your status.”
San Francisco school officials are looking at ways to encourage more poor students to accept government-financed meals, including the possibility of introducing cashless cafeterias where all students are offered the same food choices and use debit cards or punch in codes on a keypad so that all students check out at the cashier in the same manner.
To see my School Reform Resource Page, see www.arightdenied.com. To be added to my school reform email list, email me at WTilson at tilsonfunds.com.
Pages
▼
Monday, March 03, 2008
Free Lunch Isn't Cool, So Some Students Go Hungry
This is really sad -- I totally understand why kids feel this way, so it's incumbent upon school systems to design a system that doesn't stigmatize low-income kids.
--------------------