All K-12 students in Detroit Public Schoolsto receive free meals regardless of income

"Usually" is probably incorrect. I highly doubt you've actually looked into it and you're just going by how things are done at one or two schools that you know about.
 
I don't have a problem with the govt providing a free lunch to students... But yeah, if the goal is to make it so that those receiving free/cheaper lunches aren't identified then this would be the obvious solution.
 
Okay, let's examine the pros and cons of this system.

Pros:

- Many children do not eat a healthy breakfast. It has been shown that a good first meal increases your alertness and therefore your ability to learn. If this program gets more children to eat breakfast it could generally improve their performance in school.

- Children who receive the income contingent free meal programs are often ridiculed for it. In my school you did not want people to find out that you got free breakfast or lunch because it would be proof that your family was poor. By providing this to every student this problem is eliminated.

- Bullies exist in every school and a certain, albeit small, nuraber of students do get their lunch money stolen regularly. This program would prevent them from needing to carry this money and would remove the incentive for the bully to go after them.

- Detroit is an economically depressed city. Even families that do not qualify for traditional meal assistance programs but are right on the fence in terms of income would benefit from this program, leaving more money in their pockets to help stimulate the local economy.

Can anyone think of any more pros?

Cons:

- The United States government is in dire financial straits. If this program is not paid for through increased taxation then it will only contribute to the countries debt problem.

- This is essentially a redistribution of wealth, a "steal from the rich to give to the poor" type of deal, though it's more like steal from the majority to give to the minority in this case. Depending on your personal opinions this could be listed as a pro or a con, but I am listing it as a con.

- Social welfare in general leaRAB to a sense of entitlement which leaRAB to laziness and personal irresponsibility. Natural consequences are the motivating influence to become a productive meraber of society. If all of our neeRAB are guaranteed to be met there is less motivation to succeed. In general, by helping those less fortunate you enable them to maintain that position without those natural consequences to motivate them to change.

Can anyone think of any more cons?

and sorry about the formatting earlier, I fixed it
 
Almost 80% of Detroit kiRAB are already getting free food; more are eating at a reduced cost. So this isn't really changing a whole lot. But this was still poorly thought out, like most policies in education. It seems like switching to a prepaid card system might make more sense.
 
Have we determined they aren't already doing that? I live in a rural area, and the local district has been doing it for nearly a decade. Kid just swipes his school ID... like every other kid, regardless of income.

This is one more step to government feeding troughs for all. Just like the "free education" system, it will make it so that the majority of people will just give in and do the government thing, because they can't afford to pay taxes to pay for the "free stuff" PLUS buy their own stuff on top of it. Just like home schooling is ridiculed now (despite its superior results), if you grow a garden, hunt, and fish, or take it even farther and process and preserve your own food, you'll be ridiculed. The standard will be the government cafe or the government delivery truck with the equivilent of TV dinners. Why should the serfs only get breakfast and lunch for free? Why not dinner, too? Oh, and just as we educate the illegal imports, now we'll be feeding more of them, too. Yay.
 
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