The announcement this week that students in 52 Hawaii schools will be receiving free breakfast and lunch starting next school year is terrific news for kids. Every adult who has worked with children knows how attention drifts and learning shuts down when students are hungry. So this is not a criticism of the program or its expansion.
This is more a startled reaction to the state of our state.
Our economy is pumping, construction jobs are cranking, unemployment is low, we live in a land of gleaming high-rise condos and sparkling marble-floored boutiques … so why are so many communities hurting?
The vast divide between the haves and the have-nots has grown wider, deeper, more undeniably unfair.
The term “free and reduced lunch” refers to more than food. Beyond a way to identify need and make sure kids get fed, it is an indicator of financial difficulties in a family, of poverty in a community, and is also used as a predictor of how well students will do in school. When officials quantify struggling schools in poor neighborhoods, they cite the number of free and reduced lunches. It is a key measurement, like class size and test scores and graduation rates.
To realize that 52 of the 255 public schools in Hawaii are in communities where at least 40 percent of the student body comes from families that are economically disadvantaged is shocking. Or it should be. Nobody should be OK with the knowledge that certain pockets of the state struggle so pervasively and, in many cases, perpetually.
The expansion of the free-meals program is, in part, to reduce the tangle of paperwork and the online application processes that each family must navigate before receiving free lunch for a child. It levels the field in the cafeteria, so to speak, removing the stigma of free lunch for some students by extending it to all students at these 52 schools regardless of their ability to pay. So it is not a direct measurement of the number of Hawaii students who could go hungry if not for free breakfast and lunch.
But the startling fact remains that public schools are becoming more and more about social outreach services on top of education for Hawaii children, and that more and more kids in Hawaii are in need of basics like food and shelter. Public schools used to educate the children of the middle class. They still do, of course, but families that can afford private schools often grab that option, taking their support for neighborhood schools and their disposable household income elsewhere.
This leaves an imbalance that is unhealthy for everyone, a Hawaii that means one thing if you’re rich and something very different if you’re not.
Free lunch in schools where close to half of the students come from families that are struggling is a place to start. A good meal always makes for a good beginning. But it isn’t the end, not if we want Hawaii to be a place of equality.
