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California bans early school start times and lunch shaming

October 14, 2019

By JOSH FRIEDMAN

California will push back school start times and ban the practice of “lunch shaming” after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a pair of bills intended to improve students’ health.

SB 328, authored by Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-La Canada Flintridge), will require middle schools to start no earlier than 8 a.m. and high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. The school start time rules will take effect on July 1, 2022.

The school start time law is intended to address insufficient student sleep, which proponents of the legislation say is a public health issue. Later school start times result in more on-time attendance and higher grades and graduation rates, Portantino has argued.

SB 265, authored by Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys), prohibits schools from denying food to or shaming children whose parents or guardians have unpaid school meal fees. Additionally, the legislation bans schools from serving meals to students who have lunch debt that are different than the ones served to students whose meal fees are paid. While poverty level students get free lunches, and some poor families pay reduced lunches, other children pay about $3 to $4 for a school lunch.

Several schools in San Luis Obispo County County, refuse to allow children whose guardians are behind on their lunch money a meal during their lunch break.

“Kids shouldn’t be treated differently at school because of their parents’ income,” Newsom stated in a tweet. “When parents can’t afford to buy the typical school lunch, kids are sometimes denied food or given a different, cheaper alternative. We’ve put an end to that practice. No more lunch shaming in CA.”


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If schools cannot start before 8:00 am, we better pass a state law that says adults (parents) don’t have to start work before 8:30 am. Otherwise we will be hearing about the need to fund “pre” school programs to watch the kids who got dropped off at 7:30 am so mom or dad to get to work on time.


5

Don’t parents want to take any responsibility for their children? Will the schools next have to provide backpacks to avoid “backpack shaming” if a child doesn’t have a new backpack every year? How about mandating a whole new wardrobe for kids so no one will feel “inferior” over wearing outdate or hand-me down clothes? Where does it end?


4

As an old farmer, I believe that most good things are achieved in the early morning. I remember walking down Bonita School Road to school at 7 a.m. back in the 1950’s. If you weren’t in your seat by 7:45 there was hell to pay. Alas, maybe times have changed. I will trust this governor and my lawmakers to make the right decision.


One thing that hasn’t changed is that kids will be hungry. I have absolutely zero qualms about seeing my tax money go to feed hungry young’uns, as my mother would refer to us all when we’d invade her kitchen after school. This is the richest country in the world. No one should go without.


-1

For every kid that cannot afford a lunch, there’s several more that have parents that can afford it but feel like they shouldn’t have to pay for it. This is called taking advantage of the system and people in general. My kids did not eat school food because I refused to pay three times more for the same crappy lunch that another kid got for free—even though the parents drove nice cars and walked around with the latest phones. This is the same reason my kids did not take a bus. The people that can “afford” it basically are paying a ton of money so others can ride for free. Again, this is called taking advantage of the system.

As for kids getting more time for sleep- BS. How about the kids get up and get their butts to school, all day, everyday. Kids are hardly in school anymore and now we need to let them sleep more? This just contributes to the whiny, lazy little snowflakes that are already infecting our world. These kids have so many rules bent for them that they really cannot function outside of their little padded bubble. How are these kids getting prepared for life?? How are they getting prepared for a job??It’s ridiculous. I’ll stop now.


6

If the California legislature and the Governor would like a list of important issues that face the state they are welcome to call me……hint….this ain’t one of them…


16

So once again our idiotic governor is grasping for votes. A later start time for school will mean “ now I can stay up even later on my electronics!”

If there was parental guidance going on, the start times for schools are realistic. Get the kids to bed!!!


17

As in all equal and just societies the standard of living will go down for all.


14

Except of course the elite ruling class.


9

When I was a child, the children whom got AM breakfast at school; I thought was odd, were the most underprivileged. This isn’t the 50s, 60s, or 70s, and your stereotypes are dated. If any of you research, vs feel and express BS unrelated sentiments of yesteryear riding off of WW2 plunders with your cheap college and housing, and see how housing and rent inflation costs vs income disparity affect something like FEEDING a child is real in America through “recent academia”, you’ll shut your mouths and fork out a penny to help a child. If it was your kids and YOU whom struggled, you might agree with this. As I do and have. A lunch from home, to be lucky vs the dog crap schools serve. Remember gardens? They used to exist too but that was considered “poor”. Damn. Gentrified comments here. A house in Atascadero is 500k now, in 1980 it was 70k. I don’t see any damn jobs to validate the cost, do you think rent is cheap? He’ll no, some dump 2 bedroom BS with drug deals, meth, heroin and hookers outside; ie Paso 24th street costs 2k a month, where do they live even, Echo?, and work making 12.50 an hour with a family? Damn, you grandfathered baby booming crybabies. If you let the rich get richer and have massive tax breaks, guess what, the poor GROWING population gets poorer. And a revolution or sensible Democracy happens.


-15

Your “if the rich get richer then the poor get poorer” nonsense is just that – nonsense.


The economy isn’t a fixed-size pie. It’s an ever-expanding pie. Wealth is created every day – from hard work, good ideas, innovation, and a dozen other ways.


The disparity you lament is the result of 50 years of bad trade agreements and globalization of labor. American workers are competing against people making ten dollars a day. This isn’t the fault of successful people; it’s the fault of our entrenched political class.


11

Lol, tell that to an educated Economist and America’s poverty rate of 50% populous. We never export American jobs over seas so wealthy 1% American CEO can have gold doors to their pent house and become president. Never. Your feeling based sentiment is none sense and non conforming to science, statistics, or reality. So that whole wealth gap science crap is just that, crap, so my education from Ivy League educated professors is just sh*t, dangit, I always believed in Fox and CNN secretly…? Well, some people believe in Elron Hubbard and the whole earth in a thousand day stuff. So, to each their own, including you.


-12

“so my education from Ivy League educated professors is just sh*t, dangit”


You may be right oldtimer.


0

It’s sad that the school district’s could not have enacted more logical start times without the professional politicians getting involved.


And also, why even charge for lunch if NO ONE has any consequences for not paying. Bad message to send to impressionable children. Denying a child a lunch should make the PARENT feel badly, not the school. Remember, these are NOT the children who cannot afford it, but those who can and their parents just wont pay.


18

I know plastic bags are banned in California but what about brown bags? Talk about a nanny state.


21

From aye,caramba: “Remember, these are NOT the children who cannot afford it, but those who can and their parents just wont pay.” Comment of the month, A-C.

This is give-away Crazifornia and the liberal Dem zealots have seized the asylum.


Please bear with me for an old story: we couldn’t afford the twenty five cent hot lunches and were given glaringly obvious brown bag lunches. All of us siblings wound up productive members of society and wound up purchasing, not inheriting, acres and homes of substance. Give me our experiences, if “shame”, any day, and whomever shamed me, if anybody, Thank You.


18

….so I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had bumblebees on them. Give me 5 bees for a quarter they’d say……


-6

Amen.


-8

Beginning in 4th grade grammar school circa 1964 my brothers and me each made our own bologna, tuna or peanut butter sandwiches before we went to bed on school nights. In the morning while oatmeal was being prepared by mom we added a carrot and piece of fruit and if we were lucky, a few potato chips and put everything into a metal lunch box that had a thermos to keep milk cold until lunch time, all by ourselves.


Too bad so many of today’s “kids” do not have the opportunities to build their character, the way we did.


Later in middle school we used paper sacks which we folded up and we reused until they could be used no more. It wasn’t until the 8th grade that I was “fortunate enough” to experience “cafeteria food” as I used my own stream of income from work to pay my own way.


The folks wouldn’t buy school lunches.


27

This is not 1964, and you and your comments are a huge issue. This is 2019, and if your logic is based on 60 years ago, 60 YEARS AGO! 60!! with a wealthy war rich nation, you are out of your fking mind. That’s like saying Nazi Germany is relative to GERMANY now! Alert, come back down to earth! This ideology is as bad as Russian Communist sympathizers who were well off remembering the good old days, Those days are DEAD, and you have the spoils! It’s your American duty to better off the next of kin, holy hell, are you all ex pats here? Or just want shiny caskets filled with riches like the Egyptians?


-28

With age should come wisdom, oldtimer.


I am certain there are still families in California who teach self reliajce, something most schools do not.


Why so angry? Socialism doesn’t lift everyone, it keeps everyone down.


10

You must hate your Socialist Military then. Nationalism= Socialism, you can’t have it both ways. Taxes are a basic of a Republic, yes, that’s socialism, not Fox news Socialism; that’s propoganda.


-8

You’re kidding, right?


-1

“Socialism doesn’t lift everyone” I know right? All those Norwegians with their health care, infrastructure investments and massive wealth fund are suffering so much.


I mean have you seen what they feed the kids at those schools, I have.


3

Norway is a homogeneous country, no minorities, no “multi-culturalism” and you don’t see them taking in Middle East refugees or Asians or Africans or any other immigrants. Go there if you prefer it – if they will even take you. But be prepared to learn Norwegian; they don’t have everything printed in a half a dozen languages for your convenience. Don’t expect the same legal system, the same rights and frankly the same opportunities you have here. It’s kind of a closed system with high taxes but it works, sort of, because they are taking care of their own, not the rest of the world like the U.S. does.


2

So you read what I wrote and your take is all about the fear of brown and yellow people and how scandinavien style social programs can’t work here because we have non-whites?


I never even suggested I wanted to move there (but I do enjoy visiting) and that has nothing to do with my comment.


It’s called casual racism womanwhohasbeenthere.


-1

Check out the fuel prices in this article:

https://www.apnews.com/a8cba045f3784dfe9ffa017ef8af30a1


The Egyptian government would never have let a commodity supplier take advantage of her people the way California’s government allows it.


Why qould anyone think government can solve problems when they create many problems with the intentions count, results don’t matter” theology?


5

My parents income qualified us for free school lunches. My parents were too proud to take them. We brown bagged it.


24

Without shame there can be no pride.


Your folks treated/raised you right.


0

Should read “my brothers and I”


-3

TAXES pay for kids to eat a meal so they don’t DIE! Taxes pay for your roads, sewer and cops, but god forbid feed a child???? Holy chit this is nuts here. So easy to throw stones in a glass house when you AQUIRED a glass house and stones from fallen soldiers, and your deceased parents 401k, pension and assets. There’s a stone of truth to shatter your house Baby Boomers. The literal worst generation that sold out the world, nature, future and man kind knowingly. Party it up and enjoy your Trader Joes and Whole Foods your fancy things and BIG tvs, thinking you’re so trendy and good and righteous.


-23

They bitch about theses social welfare programs that benefit kids while ignoring the billions of dollars spent on corporate welfare?

Let’s just use one example; Walmart the largest American employer! First off they don’t pay a living wage, which in turn has their employees utilizing social welfare programs, like SNAP benefits, just to make ends meet. They then double dip into that by being the largest beneficiary from that program! In 2012 taking 18% of those benefits in food sales nationally. I won’t even get into the billion dollars or so they benefit from in tax breaks and loopholes every frickin’ year! Or how in one year, 2011, their federal subsidies equaled the amount they paid in taxes!

It is estimated that each American family pays over $6,000.00 a year to subsidize corporate welfare, and they want to bitch about a kid gettin’ a meal?! Better I guess to have a kip shamed for not being able to buy lunch then shaming corporations into paying their fare share, right? Might cost them a dollar or two more on that 65″ TV they sport in their “family room”…


-6

No, the “bad message” is shaming a young impressionable mind with something they’re not responsible for. You double down on that fact by then denying them a meal they both deserve and need, and then exacerbating it even further by doing it in a public place and in front of other young impressionable minds.


-14

The thing is, no one is being denied a lunch. Kids aren’t going hungry if they can’t afford a lunch. They are just given a different lunch, though I can’t imagine how they can put together a less costly lunch than the gruel they normally serve.


5

Do you listen to any news? parents whom can’t afford to pay back meager amounts of lunch debt get financially punished in states, or suffer legal threats from their state! NPR just covered this. Hence the frigging article here on CCN!and news does not = TV, I mean REAL news.


-5
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