Please increase our property taxes for the sole purpose of funding the HCDE free lunch program, or reduce non-essential government services and staff. Government is so absurd to even consider stopping an essential service of feeding children, while they waste our tax dollars on programs that have so little return.
Our obligation as a community is to ensure that the most dependent population have their essential to life needs met. It is a fact that the only decent meal and structure many children receive is at school.
According to the Tennessee Department of Education report card, 58.7 percent of the HCDE student population is economically disadvantaged. We cannot allow the free lunch program to end, regardless of federal grants or not.
It seems to me with almost 60 percent of the student population being impoverished, we should just fund the lunches at the all the schools to remove the stigma of poverty.
While we discuss the complete dysfunction of our public schools, there is little discussion about the challenges HCDE faces educating children that sleep in cars and go to school due to homelessness. It is a pervasive problem. These children cannot learn if their basic needs are not being met. There is no sight that cuts to the very core than seeing homeless children, and HCDE is not just educating children. Like it or not, HCDE must deliver a certain level of social services, because the majority of their student population is impoverished. That is a fact.
I am strongly opposed to defunding any free lunch program. Raise my taxes if needed, or reduce government operations in non-essential services.
County government, don't be stupid.
April Eidson
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Well as Milton Friedman once said, "There's no such thing as a free lunch". I personally am taxed enough. If all the Bernies want free tuition and free health care and free everything else, I would suggest they move to Europe. It is easy for people receiving government handouts to continue the incessant drone of raise taxes, raise taxes, raise taxes. They pay none.
Between Medicare tax, Social Security, federal tax, property tax, sewer tax, emissions tax, sales tax and the hundred other hidden taxes on electric, cable, water, gas and anything else you can tax, I say it's enough darn taxes.
I can't go back to my employer every year and say, gee, I don't seem to be able to manage my money, I think I need more this year. However, this is exactly what the school board, city, county, and federal government do year after year. When a politician actually does something about wage stagnation, illegal immigration (not undocumented citizens as the liberals would like you to believe), and a hundred other problems this country faces far more pressing than who uses which bathroom or which obscure minority is being slighted this week, I will be open to paying more. Until that happens all I can say is if someone wants a free lunch, then get a job.
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but what percentage of those free lunches do you suppose goes to illegal aliens/Democratic voter base?
Mark Maynor
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Ms. Edison,
While I do not like to see a child go hungry, I don't think raising taxes is the way to go. If you raise taxes you will have more money for the school system, but you will also increase the tax burden on the impoverished as well. This increase might be the very thing that would place some of these children in a situation of losing a place to live, or clothes to wear.
More taxes affects everyone - children and people that live on fixed incomes. I agree with reduce government operations in non-essential services, but I am sure this would affect other programs for the impoverished as well.
Jim Dunn
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April I always like reading your opinion pieces, they are always well researched and informative. Most of the time I agree with you but on this subject I'm with the others, taxing more does not stop the problem.
The government has slowly but surely made it impossible for those folks unfortunate enough to be beholden to it get out and be independent. Any job the less educated can secure does not pay what a family can make between rent subsidies, food stamps, medical insurance and of course, that free phone. You really can't blame a person for opting out of the workforce, the math doesn't add up. Years ago if you were unlucky enough to be a part of the non-working society and you were lucky enough to qualify for some help there was a deadline, you had to actually look for work or be willing to be trained for a new job. You had to spend time bettering yourself and your family and not working the system. In the last 8 years all of that has changed even to the point where a male college student can now qualify for assistance rather than work part-time (or even full time) to better themselves. This is where we've landed after decades of work ethics and family pulling together to get ahead, with a generation that wants free tuition, free medical (that used to be a perk in the working community), free phones (made available through taxation on those of us that pay the full price) and free rent.
I don't know what the answer is but making for available to those that contribute less isn't the answer. The more you get, the more you want. We're literally upside down in our thinking. For me personally this began when we decided it wasn't right to have God in the schools, eliminating the Pledge, eliminating prayer, eliminating our moral compass without us realizing it. Slowly but surely we're losing our way.........
Sue White
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Ms. Eidson,
In your letter, you state that "According to the Tennessee Department of Education report card, 58.7 percent of the HCDE student population is economically disadvantaged". What I can't figure out is where do these nearly 60 percent of impoverished kids come from?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hamilton County has only about 16 percent of its residents in poverty. Draw your own conclusions.
Jeff Davis
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Aprile, I'll be 74 years old June 17th. The Chattanooga school system didn't have cafeterias or school lunch programs at Avondale Grammer, Hardy Jr. High or Kirkman when I was going to school. We packed our lunch in brown bags or lunch pails, and times were much harder than they are today.
Bread and baloney are still cheap if ya buy at the Dollar Store. It was good enough for us kids back then, it'll be good enough for the kids today.
Don Woods
Knoxville