Tag Archives: school lunch

New Massachusetts ‘Tax the Rich’ Law Raises $1.5 Billion for Free School Lunch and More

“Taxing the rich, it’s good,” said one progressive advocate in the state.

By Julia Conley. Published 1-2-2024 by Common Dreams

Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture
/flickr/CC

A new “millionaire’s tax” in Massachusetts was expected to generate $1 billion in revenue last year to help pay for public education, infrastructure, and early childcare programs, but projections were a bit off, according to a fresh state analysis.

The state Department of Revenue estimated late last week that the Fair Share Amendment, which requires people with incomes over $1 million, to pay a 4% annual surtax, will add $1.5 billion to state coffers this fiscal year, which ends in June—surpassing expectations.

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US High Schoolers Launch Green New Deal for ‘Our Schools and Our Futures’

“Public schools belong to us, and we know we deserve better,” said a Sunrise Movement organizer and the youngest school board member in Idaho.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 9-25-2023 by Common Dreams

Young organizers hold up a banner celebrating the “Green New Deal for Schools Summer Camp 2023.” (Photo: Sunrise Movement)

In the face of right-wing attacks on public schools—including climate education—more than 50 high schools nationwide launched the Green New Deals for Schools campaign Monday.

The campaign, organized by the youth-led Sunrise Movement, is demanding that school boards and districts act to provide buildings powered with renewable energy; free, healthy, local, and sustainable meals; support for finding well-paying, unionized green careers; plans for extreme weather events; and instruction about the climate crisis.

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Minnesota Dems Set Bar for State Legislatures, Passing Nearly Every Item on ‘Transformational’ Agenda

“The work we’ve done over the last five months will make a generational impact on our state—it will lower costs, improve lives, and cut child poverty,” said Gov. Tim Walz.

By Julia Conley. Published 5-23-2023 by Common Dreams

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz hugs students at Webster Elementary School in Minneapolis on March 17, 2023 after signing a law that makes school meals free for all public and charter school students. (Photo: @GovTimWalz/Twitter)

Progressives are applauding what Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman called the state’s “transformational” legislative session, which ended on Tuesday after the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party passed nearly every item on its agenda, securing economic justice, reproductive rights, and labor protections for Minnesotans.

With the DFL holding only a narrow majority in the state House and Senate—a six-vote and one-vote margin, respectively—policy researcher Will Stancil said on social media that “the scale of their achievement cannot be overstated.”

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‘Beautiful’: Minnesota Becomes 4th State to Provide Free School Meals to All Kids

“Let this serve as a reminder that poverty is a policy choice,” said one advocate. “In the richest country in the world, it is absolutely inexcusable that millions of our children go to school hungry because they are living in poverty.”

By Kenny Stancil.  Published 3-18-2023 by Common Dreams

Students hug Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after he signed a universal free school meal bill into law on March 17, 2023. Photo: Prem/Twitter

Surrounded by students, teachers, and advocates, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Friday afternoon signed into law a bill to provide breakfast and lunch at no cost to all of the state’s roughly 820,000 K-12 pupils regardless of their household income.

The move to make Minnesota the fourth U.S. state to guarantee universal free school meals—joining California, Maine, and Colorado—elicited praise from progressives. Continue reading

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‘Time to Take to the Streets’: Working Class Hold ‘Enough Is Enough’ Rallies Across UK

“Does a CEO need an extra zero at the end of their salary—or should nurses, posties, and teachers be able to heat their homes?” said one supporter ahead of the #EnoughIsEnough National Day of Action.

By Julia Conley  Published 9-30-2022 by Common Dreams

From the Enough is Enough rally in Blackpool. Photo: OCS Dispute Lancs & South Cumbria/Twitter

Weeks of economic justice rallies organized by the Enough Is Enough campaign across the United Kingdom over the past six weeks have been building to a National Day of Action, set to take place Saturday in more than four dozen cities and towns as hundreds of thousands of people protest the country’s cost-of-living crisis.

The campaign, whose roots lie in the trade union and tenants’ rights movements, has outlined five specific demands of the U.K. government as renters have seen their average monthly housing costs skyrocket by 11% on average since last year and household energy bills approaching $4,000 (£3,582) per year. Continue reading

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Trump’s USDA Rolls Back School Lunch Guidelines Championed by Michelle Obama

The nutrition rules were long abhorred by industry groups who now have a friend in the White House

By Lauren McCauley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 5-1-2017

Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue, joined by Sen. Pat Roberts (left) & Tom Marshall, Loudoun County School Board, signs a proclamation.. Photo: USDA

In one of his first orders of business, President Donald Trump’s newly confirmed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue took steps to weaken school lunch standards championed by former First Lady Michelle Obama.

In an interim final rule, announced by Perdue while he visited an elementary school in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Leesburg, Virginia on Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is rolling back nutrition rules that were part of Obama’s Let’s Move campaign that was abhorred by food industry groups. Continue reading

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School Teaches Kids How to Bully

By U.S. Department of Agriculture (Girls Smiling) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

By U.S. Department of Agriculture (Girls Smiling) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Salt Lake City Elementary School District in Utah has reached a new level in their curriculum. They have added teaching approximately 40 children how to be a bully by setting an example, and are now on track for a highly developed and successful “Future Activists of America” (FAA) program.

According to CBS News, after acknowledging a failure in the school’s notification system to let parents know balances of the school lunch program’s students were low, the school made the decision at Tuesday’s lunch line to teach these kids a very important lesson. As the kids moved to the end of the line with their food, staff took the lunches and threw them in the garbage in front of the students. Kids said they felt the staff was angry at them, and for reasons they were not aware of or able to understand.

What is easy to understand is that children can not be treated with discriminatory behavior by adults that are supposed to be in charge of their education and well being. To do so in front of other children is even more reprehensible, as it sends the message that there is something so inherently wrong with these particular children that they do not deserve to eat lunch. Kids don’t understand clerical errors and computer glitches, nor should they become victims when a school fails to establish adequate billing or communication systems.

Bully for you, Salt Lake City Elementary School. Let’s hope your program isn’t force-fed to other schools across America.

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