Congressman Steve King (R, IA) has introduced HR 610, titled Choices in Education Act of 2017. The bill does two things – establishes a nationwide voucher program and tinkers with the school lunch regulations. I’ll cover the voucher program at length in another article. Here’s a brief walk-through of the the school lunches part.
Section 9(a)(1)(A)(i) of the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (42 U.S.C. 1758(a)(1)(A)(i)) is amended by inserting before the semicolon the following: “, to establish a calorie maximum for individual school lunches, or to prohibit a child from eating a lunch provided by the child’s parent or legal guardian”.
That would amend §1758 to read as follows (changes in bold):
- 1758. Program requirements
(a) Nutritional requirements
(1)(A) Lunches served by schools participating in the school lunch program under this chapter shall meet minimum nutritional requirements prescribed by the Secretary on the basis of tested nutritional research, except that the minimum nutritional requirements-
(i) shall not be construed to prohibit the substitution of foods to accommodate the medical or other special dietary needs of individual students, to establish a calorie maximum for individual school lunches, or to prohibit a child from eating a lunch provided by the child’s parent or legal guardian; and
(ii) shall, at a minimum, be based on the weekly average of the nutrient content of school lunches.
So, no calorie maximums and no confiscations of lunches sent from home. Not that the Congress has any business meddling in education in the first place, but this is not the typical unfunded mandate to take positive action which Congress has traditionally imposed upon public schools.
The no-calorie-maximums part will doubtlessly cause hysterics among the usual suspects, but in practicality will free the school lunch folks from having to worry about going over the limit by one calorie and incurring the wrath of US DoEd retribution. And while this is indeed micromanagement of the schools by Congress, it is a net gain because it rolls back existing onerous federal regulations; regulations which should not exist, of course. The US Secretary of Education would still be in the business of prescribing minimum nutritional requirements for school lunches.
The second part is a huge win for parents – no confiscation of lunches sent from home. HR 610 may also override the peanut butter bans in place in many schools. While still meddling in education, this is a more libertarian-friendly form of meddling as it articulates an individual right which the government may not infringe – much like the First Amendment.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce, where HR 610 currently resides, has twenty two Republican members including Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (NC), Vice Chairman Joe Wilson (SC) and Tea Party star Dave Brat (Virginia). The committee also includes seventeen Democrats. It will be interesting to see what they do with this.
Comments
47 responses to “HR 610 – Restoring Parental Freedom to Pack Lunches, Etc.”
“The committee also includes seventeen Democrats. It will be interesting to see what they do with this.”
Vote “No”….for Teh Childrun”
This
If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding!
How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
Here are a few options.
Inflation -Women and Children Hit Hardest
I had some friends who were really worked up about this. It’s so unfair to Michelle Obama!!! Waaaaahhhh!!!
You know what I needed in school? CALORIES. LOTS OF THEM.
I easily ate more than 4000 calories a day in high school, and I was still hungry. 4 hours a day of football practice will do that to you.
Not once did I ever wish I had more kale and arugula salad.
How else are they going to grow up with a protein deficiency that makes them cranky all the time and hate all the happy people who would shoot an animal to eat it?
When I was a freshman in high school, I weighed 150 lbs and could eat 4 double cheeseburgers with fries and drink 2 cokes for lunch and never gain a pound. There was a little diner down the road, short walk from there and back in those days of unbridled wild west hedonism, we were allowed to leave and get lunch as long as we came back by next class. I also liked healthy food, which I got at home, I just wanted a lot of it. But back then, the kids were not snowflakes either, at least not the majority. Any attempt to force a Michelle lunch on us would have met with immediate overwhelming rebellion.
It’s being met with overwhelming rebellion right now. 70% of the lunches go right into the trash. Over a billion dollars down the drain every year.
“Over a billion dollars down the drain every year.”
Pocket change for what politicians waste in a year. Nothing left to cut.
I became aware of this from the post of a marginally sane friend at the obligatory gay fringe of progdom.
Ditto. Sane friend from college. Super-lefty but not shrill, PhD, works for Lockheed. It’s the Bay Area division of Lockheed, so of course a lot of her friends are going to suck.
There was much screeching about Reagan and ketchup.
I find it difficult to believe anyone would get worked up about this. What? Do they think schools will suddenly start feeding children tens of thousands of calories of doughnuts and cake icing? What possible motivation could the existing statute have aside from total control over the minutia of people’s lives? Why establish a maximum count instead of a minimum?
The First Lady’sThe Wookies school lunch meddling was some of the creepiest shit we saw fromthe first ladythe wookie.Brave New Worlders hardest hit.
Really Playa, what kinds of people are these
friendscreeps?Team players. Obama did it = good, Republicans undoing it = bad.
That’s as far as the thought process goes.
I think it shows a remarkable deficit in both introspection and character. I suppose the former follows from the latter and is more common than not. It’s no wonder that identity politics is so easy to sell.
In case anyone is wondering about the implications of this: It means that when the zombie apocalypse arrives your friends will be the first to cut your throat and steal your shit.
Especially her bullying Gabby Douglas on national TV.
Why, yes, Suthen, yes they do believe that. It’s disheartening.
So, who are you who is so wise in the ways of html tagging on here? Share your secrets with me so I can post like a big dog?
italics is “em” and bold is “strong”
One size fits all meals, to go with the one size fits all curricula! Why do the Kulaks and wreckers insist on complicating things?
But seriously, as a family that has strong opinions about what our children to eat, these are great proposed changes. I might even write this guy’s office and thank him.
Common Kale?
What you did there…it is seen.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce
I guess we should be happy they have not taken steps to legislate what the, “workforce” eats for lunch. Yet.
Nobody expects the spinach inquisition.
Boooo.
I laughed.
So did I. Nice rig in your picture. There is a farmer down the road with an old cruiser in his pole barn that I am coveting.
Thanks! There are a few in town here, I found this one at a farm. It had been sitting for a few years but started right up off a jump. It’s been some work, but it’s worth it. I still need jump seats, I have to start graveyard hunting.
Me too. Really, where else can you find commenters like we have? I look around the net and it is a wasteland of stupid out there.
Wait, you mean to tell me there are schools that don’t allow kids to bring their lunches from home?
I have to say I love my kid’s charter school lunches. They’re “healthy”, but they’re also things the kids actually want to eat. A private company (O NOES!) supplies the lunches.
I’m guessing that they’re trying to avoid kids smuggling in black market peanuts and gluten. Those are like garlic to a vampire. If the kids start weaponizing them for the chewed Pop Tart guns, there will be pale-kale kids literally exploding everywhere.
pale-kale kids
Saw ’em. You know, before they got big and sold out. Small club in Prague while I was hiking in Europe before grad school.
Dammit, JB, you made me do some actual research. All I could find was one outlier:
“At his public school, Little Village Academy on Chicago’s West Side, students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.”
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-04-11/news/ct-met-school-lunch-restrictions-041120110410_1_lunch-food-provider-public-school
But the consensus seems to be that no, it’s not really a thing. I assume that Snopes dot com would have updated the article if there had been a major policy change since then.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/education/lunchban.asp
My kids’ lunch gets inspected every day. No peanut products, no junk food.
How do you not shake with rage at that? Practice?
If I were to sum up the success of Western capitalism in one phrase, I’d use this one.
Good point. We have people who try to stop other people from feeding a kid too much food. What we need are bread lines and government rationing like the noble countries who are for the people.
The irony is that the title of that part of the bill (yes, that’s a congress thing) is “No Hungry Kids Act.” For reals, yo.
Is that where they trot out fake statistics like “millions of kids starving every day”? I keep seeing that in commercials and yelling “you lie!” at my television.
Reminds me of the story of the Soviet delegation that was sent over here to study poverty in the US.
Something along the lines of they ended up not filing a report.
We have no poverty amongst the Swedes in America, too.
Now that you mention it I have never seen a mailbox with ANDERSON on it in front of a tar paper shack.
Any number of countries would consider it a smashing success for “Too many calories” to become a national problem.
The Lunchroom Terrorist Starter Pack
You don’t want be supplying arms to terrorists, do you? Think of the children!
Think of the children!
AKA; soft targets
“Oh, you said let kids pack *lunches.* That idea is much less interesting than I initially thought.”
The school lunch program was always about farm subsidies. When it started, in the late 30s, they were dumping all this excess milk in the schools (that’s why they give you milk with every meal) and then wondering why all these black kids were going to the school nurse after lunch with tummy-aches. After attributing it to the inherent laziness of the Negro trying to get out of school work, it finally dawned on someone that a significant amount of individuals with African heritage are lactose intolerant.