Republican Representative Todd Rokita (IN-4) is probably best known for despising humanity. Specifically, he despises the kind of humanity that isn’t white and doesn’t have a considerable amount of wealth. He made a tiny dent of a name a couple of years ago by looking like an out-of-touch and heartless jackass during Paul Ryan’s infamous War on Poverty hearings. At those hearings he questioned the validity of a single mother who had pulled herself up from homelessness to get work and take care of her family with the help of public assistance. Yes, it was as abhorrent as it sounds. Not one to let go of trying to kick people when they are down, Todd Rokita has introduced H.R. 5003, the Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016.
A child nutrition reauthorization bill (H.R. 5003) introduced on April 20 by Rep. Todd Rokita, chair of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, includes a provision that would severely restrict schools’ eligibility for community eligibility, an option within the national school lunch and breakfast programs allowing high-poverty schools to provide meals at no charge to all students.[1] If this bill becomes law, 7,022 schools now using community eligibility to simplify their meal programs and improve access for low-income students could have to reinstate applications and return to monitoring eligibility in the lunch line within two years.[2] These schools serve nearly 3.4 million students. Another 11,647, schools that qualify for community eligibility but have not yet adopted it could lose eligibility.
The law would raise the Community Eligibility Provision of the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act from a 40 percent threshold up to a 60 percent threshold. What this means is that communities would need to have 60 percent of its population living at or below the poverty line in order for their school to be able to apply. The provision is used to simplify the process of getting children who need free lunch.
Under federal law, certain students are automatically enrolled for free meals without an application because they are at special risk for food insecurity and other consequences of living in poverty. They include: students in households participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps), the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance program, or the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), as well as students who are homeless, migrant, runaway, in Head Start, or in foster care.
Under community eligibility, these especially vulnerable students who enrolled without an application are known as “identified students.” A school (or group of schools) qualifies for community eligibility based on its Identified Student Percentage (ISP), which is determined by dividing its number of identified students by its total enrollment. Schools with an ISP of 40 percent or greater can adopt community eligibility.
And what do the Republicans hope this will do? Cut spending.
Raising the threshold would save a little bit of money, as fewer students would qualify for free school meals, but the overall savings of about $1.6 billion over 10 years wouldn’t come close to offsetting the administrative burden, increased social stigma for low-income students, and negative health and academic effects it could create.
[My emphasis.]
You can’t expect much from a man whose budget proposal promised to get rid of debt in 10 years without raising taxes, while repealing “Obamacare” and providing everybody with their choice of Unicorn or Pegasus to ride off into the sunset on.
Oakland, California’s Rep. Barbara Lee is fighting the good fight against Todd Rokita and his terrible law.