to make the program available without discrimination to all schools, to submit a total plan showing how the service will be provided in each school, and to explain the exclusion of any school under its jurisdiction. Lack of facilities, the enrollment of large numbers of poor children, or the fact that a school is a neighborhood school where children can go home for lunch should not be considered valid reasons for excluding schools from the program. The contract should obligate a school district to feed all of its needy children. These children should be identified in advance, according to a uniform Federal standard, and the district should report to USDA its plan for including them in the National School Lunch Program. 3. Higher reimbursement rates and increased Special Assistance (Sec. 11) funds should be made available to schools which serve a high proportion of needy children. Increased Federal and state financial support to reduce the price to 204, plus the requirement that the program must be available district-wide, will put the school lunch within the reach of most children. But there will still be schools in poor neighborhoods which will need extra assistance. a. School districts containing schools in poor neighborhoods and/or a high percentage of poor children should get a higher reimbursement rate out of general school lunch funds. This would enable them to reduce the price below 20¢ and across the board in poverty-impacted schools and to offer free or reduced-price meals to poor children wherever they are in the district. b. Special Assistance (Sec. 11) funds should be sufficient to help the states feed all of their needy pupils, not just a token few. As a first step, Congress should appropriate the $10 million originally authorized for Special Assistance. Subsequent appropriations (following this one) should be based not on the number of free meals served in the previous years, but on the estimated number of children who will need assistance in the fiscal year for which the appropriation is made. Ultimately, the School Lunch Program should be adequately funded on the national and state levels so that Special Assistance would not be necessary. But until that time Special Assistance will have to be vastly increased to be effective. 4. Children should be eligible for free or reduced price lunches according to a uniform standard of need. All school children in families below the poverty level established by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), plus all school children in families receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), should be automatically eligible. Children in large families with marginal incomes, even though they are not on welfare or below the poverty level, should be added. 5. Identifying needy children by such practies as using special tokens or different color tickets, by calling out the names of those receiving free or reduced price meals, by collecting money in a conspicuously different way, by forcing them to go to the end of the cafeteria line or by requiring them to work should be specifically banned by USDA Regulations. We do not object to giving all children the opportunity to earn money or credit for community service. But to make their eating dependent on cafeteria work is humiliating and psychologically unsound. 6. All school food service should be put under one administration at all levels-national, state and local-to promote uniform funding, standards of eligibility, record-keeping and review and to effect greater efficiency and coordination. The need for special programs to provide lunches and breakfasts to needy students will continue until the National School Lunch Program becomes truly inclusive. We look forward to the time when all special efforts, with their separate administrations, will not be necessary. 7. USDA and the states should assume greater responsibility for improving the administration of the National School Lunch Program. Higher levels of administrative and business skill as well as competence in food service are required if the program is to be of greater benefit at a lower cost. The major burden will be on the states who carry traditionally the responsibility for professional standards, training and certification. The states should accelerate their efforts in training, upgrading and certification and should hasten the time when only certified persons will be eligible for employment. USDA should set guidelines for program standards, administrative reviews and record-keeping. Federal grants to strengthen the administration of the state and local school lunch divisions should be provided. 8. The Congress, USDA, Boards of Education, state legislators, school lunch administrators should begin planning now for a universal free school lunch program as part of a coordinated plan for better nutrition for all children. We believe that school lunch should be served to all children as a matter of course. Each child should be given his school lunch in the same way that the majority of children now receive their books and school equipment. The school lunch should be a basic part of the free public school education to which every child has a right. Part of the malaise of the present school lunch program is that it is isolated from the rest of the child's education. More important, its present operation bears little relation to the needs of today's children. What is needed is a total plan which will unify the present piecemeal system, modernize its administration and integrate it into the total educational process. In order to achieve this goal, we recommend a two-stage program: a. Congress should provide incentive grants to school districts, municipalities or counties to develop model nutritional and food service programs for children and youth. These models should include: a scientific analysis of nutritional needs; a total food service plan for maximum participation, free or at low cost, for children of all ages; experimentation with developments in food technology; increased efficiency and professional upgrading in already existing programs; community involvement in nutrition education; coordination with other community planning efforts for improving health and education. b. The President should appoint a National Commission with a mandate to design a federally sponsored free nutrition and food service program for children and youth. The Commission should gather data about the nutritional status of America's children, evaluate all food service programs, and review the experiences of other countries with universal programs. Based on their study, the Commission should make recommendations about how a universal free school lunch program should be financed and administered. It should create the blueprint for a total nutrition program which would include not only the free school lunch but which would cover children's nutritional and health needs all day, every day. The Commission should be broadly based and should include educators, nutritionists, economists, experts in food technology, school lunch administrators and parents. "It is my firm conviction that to make lunch a fully educational project, it is necessary that it be offered free to all the children every day... It is a growing conviction that a proper lunch is just as important as proper teaching, and that can be controlled only by having lunches offered to all children in the school . . . We are living in an age where the schools will assume more and more responsibility for the children and when such responsibilities are assumed, we in the school lunch field cannot neglect our obligation to the hungry child and to all children." George Mueller, Late Comptroller, Board of Education, Kansas City, Missouri, May 21, 1968. Transcript, CBS Reports "Hunger in America" CBS REPORTS "HUNGER IN AMERICA" AS BROADCAST OVER THE CBS TELEVISION NETWORK, TUESDAY, MAY 21, 1968 Reporter: Charles Kuralt Written by: Peter Davis and Martin Carr Produced by: Martin Carr Executive Producer: Don Hewitt ©1968. Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. All rights reserved. CHARLES KURALT. Hunger is hard to recognize in America. We know it in other places, like Asia and Africa. But these children, all of them, are Americans. And all of them are hungry. Hunger is easy to recognize when it looks like this. This baby is dying of starvation. He was an American. Now he is dead. (Announcement.) ANNOUNCER. Here for CBS Reports is Charles Kuralt. KURALT. Food is the most basic of all human needs. Man can manage to live without shelter, without clothing, even without love. Poverty, unpleasant as it is, is bearable. But man can't remain alive without food. America is the richest country in the world, in fact the richest country in history. We spend a colossal amount of money-one and a half billion dollars a year-to feed the rest of the world. But this spring a private agency, The Citizens Board of Inquiry, consisting of distinguished leaders in many fields, released an exhaustive report claiming that serious hunger exists in many places in the United States. Out of a total population of 200 million, the report states, 30 million Americans are impoverished, with family income below $3,000 a year. Five million of these people are helped by two existing Federal Food Programs. Now a new figure must be added: Of the 30 million who are impoverished 10 million Americans, whether or not they are reached by Federal aid, are hungry. That's just the arithmetic. Unfortunately, the problem is all too human. CBS News has spent the last ten months investigating hunger in America. We selected four areas of the country to examine closely. Tonight we present our results. San Antonio, Texas, is celebrating its 250th birthday with an international exposition, HemisFair '68. Thirty-two foreign countries with pavilions, restaurants, amusements and exhibits are helping San Antonio congratulate itself on its growth and progress. There is a skyride, a monorail, and, of course, the usual 600-foot tower with the revolving restaurant on top. Texas Governor John Connally says HemisFair has turned the downtown area "from slum to jewel box. But the jewels don't glitter very brightly on the other side of town where 400,000 Mexican-Americans live, half the city's population. Most of them are crowded into what city officials refer to as "poverty tracks." Mexican-Americans face a language barrier, and like most poor people, they suffer from lack of skills and unemployment. A hard |