Earned Income Tax Credit Program

 In the United States, poverty has been an ongoing issue and many low income families are struggling to survive. As time goes on, inflation rises and pandemics also arise, which is why it's important for safety nets to be there to help those in need. There have been many programs implemented in order to help, such as SNAP, affordable housing, WIC, free or reduced cost school lunches, supplemental security income (SSI), and many more. I will be discussing one of the major programs implemented to reduce poverty, the tax expenditure policy to give more money to households who are working with low incomes named the “Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).” 

The earned income tax credit program is a way to help working people who have low income by reducing the amount of taxes owed, which can lead to them getting refunds instead of paying income taxes. In order to qualify, some requirements for this program are: a valid social security number or ITIN, be at least 25 years old if you haven’t any children in your household, be a U.S Citizen or legal U.S. resident, and have an earned income coming in (but it must be below a threshold—which was $63,298 for tax year 2023). When it comes to determining the amount of the EITC people would attain, this involves a formula and depends on income, filing status, and the number of children if you have a family. For example, according to Illinois Department of Revenue, the maximum income you can earn to qualify if you are a single person or head of a household without children or other dependents would be $17,640. For example, if you have no kids and are single, and you earn less than $17,640, you probably qualify. If you are married and file jointly, but have no children or dependents, you qualify if you earn less than $24,210. The EITC goes up when you have children; a single parent with one child would usually get an EITC if their income was below $46,560, and if the household was a married couple filing jointly with one dependent they would qualify with an income under $53,120. For two children, single parents qualify at $52,918 and married couples qualify under $59,478. Lastly, for three children or more, it would be $56,838 if you're single and $63,398 if you're married. These are all figures for tax year 2023, but the limits rise every year. 

The EITC is a refundable credit. This means if your household had a benefit of $3,995 (the maximum benefit for a household with one child/dependent), and your tax owed to the IRS was $950 (before tax credits figure in), and your workplace had withheld $1,200 from your paycheck over the year, you wouldn’t just get back the $250 you had overpaid. Instead, the $3,995 refundable credit would wipe out the $950 debt and further credit you $3,045 (your $3,995 EITC benefit minus your  federal income taxes), and since you had already paid $1,200 in federal income tax withholding, you would get all that back as well.  So, you would get a refund from the EITC of $4,245 (a refund of the federal tax withholding plus the $3,045 net EITC benefit after subtracting the federal tax you would have otherwise paid if you hadn’t applied for the EITC).  On top of the federal EITC, some states have state EITC benefits, and some families can also get a refundable child tax credit along with their EITC benefit. For families qualifying for a maximum EITC benefit (generally earning around $20,000, give or take a few thousand, depending upon the size of the family and the number of dependents under age 18), the EITC benefit can be substantial. For a family with three children, the EITC benefit in 2024 (for tax year 2023) could be as high as $7,430.

The EITC is a popular tool for fighting poverty among working families, and it most likely will continue to stay. Benefits increase as an income increase from $1 up to the maximum benefit levels $1, so as a part-time worker or low hourly-wage worker works more hours, their benefit increases more and more. This creates an incentive for part-time and low-wage workers to get involved in the labor market and stay employed. In essence, the EITC allows the American public to subsidize employers and companies that hire part-time workers or low-wage workers, allowing those businesses to pay lower wages, since the EITC will supplement their low wages with additional money to help a family survive. 

 One of the first benefits many receive from this program is helping reduce poverty. Census data has shown that in 2018, 5.6 million people have been lifted above the poverty line due to the help of the extra money given as refund of their taxes (according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities). According to some of the research charts,10.6 million people have been lifted from the poverty line in 2019 by the EITC. Another 17.5 million people still struggle with poverty, but the EITC made their poverty less severe. Not only does the program help families struggle less with money, but this will help children's overall mental and physical well being. Poverty causes stresses in a family that harm children. However, as the EITC reduces family stress and panic in the face of economic hardship, this allows children to focus in school without having the worry of their household struggling to avoid eviction or hunger. Since the children will be more focused in school, this  will help them achieve greater success in life and have better opportunities to grow wealth. All the programs that reduce the stresses of poverty by lifting consumption in low-income families to levels above poverty are beneficial for the mental and physical well-being of young Americans, whether the benefits are SNAP and free school lunches, Medicaid, or the EITC, but the EITC is one of the largest of these programs with a correspondingly large impact on national well-being.  It is very important to realize that stress can have immense effects on everyone, and people who face daily stressors are low income households. Trying to survive by living paycheck to paycheck is an ultimate life stressor that cannot be escaped. Some physical/mental effects of poverty stressors would be increased chances of depression, higher level of chronic diseases, and lower average life spans. Some social problems that could arise would be transfer of stress from parent to children, less time to bond with family, lower emotional well being, poorer executive decision-making, more externalizing mental health problems such as substance abuse, and less life satisfaction. Anything that fights poverty reduces these undesirable harms inflicted on persons experiencing poverty.

Another benefit of continuing and applying for the EITC would be that it provides more for those who are working and creates an increased supply of labor. It is an incentive promoting more people to work, which also overall helps run the economy. Many skeptics of welfare policies usually argue that programs will lead to a decrease of employment and people will take advantage of the help given by the government in a way that reduces their willingness to accept employment, but with this program, you need to be able to earn income in order to be able to qualify for the tax credit refund. Having an increase in employment can also lead to higher earnings that can help them get out from below the poverty line and hopefully continue to grow into more wealth over time so their families can continue to remain out of poverty as the children grow into adults.

Now, some concerns about the EITC involve the difficulty of keeping track and making sure that each application is valid and there is no fraud being done. According to the Tax Foundation, EITC has a high error rate, imposes a marriage penalty, and discourages work past a certain threshold. That is, once a household’s income goes past the level where that household earns the maximum benefit, for every dollar in increased income the family earns, the EITC decreases.  As the EITC decreases, the increased income also will increase the income taxes owed, so the decrease can be fairly sharp. A family earning $22,000 and gaining the maximum EITC benefit might not want to significantly increase hours worked or take a promotion if the resulting $8,000 income increase triggered an increase in taxes of $960 and a decrease in EITC benefits of $1,200 and a decrease in SNAP benefits of $840 for a net income after-tax-and-transfer consumption increase of only $5,000. 

The program's complexity makes it hard to navigate and determine if the money is going to those who are actually in need. Also, by design the EITC’s incentive to increase income means that it does little to help the poorest of the poor who have no income or extremely low incomes, and does more to help families that are just a little below the poverty threshold. All of these cons are valid but potentially specific jobs can be created with the IRS to help administer and overview applications and verify that they are valid, which can boost the economy with the new jobs opening. It is also understandable to see the marriage penalty since you are joining both accounts, it can disqualify you from entering the program and although many families meet a certain income criteria, they are still in need of the extra cash to help get by. Some reforms that could be done to help with the drawbacks of the program could be simplifying the eligibility rules and making sure to specify certain rules on children dependents.When it comes to the marriage penalty, it would be worthwhile to eliminate the marriage penalty completely.  That is, currently two single parents, each earning about $20,000 with one child dependent get married, they would become a married couple family with two children dependents and an income of about $40,000, but their EITC (for the single household) would be less than the combined value of the EITC benefits the households had collected before marriage. It should be simple to adjust income thresholds and tables of benefit rates so that the tax system would stop penalizing people for marrying and merging their households.

No program is perfect, which is why it's crucial to address concerns and reform our policies by focusing on its effectiveness and shortcomings. The EITC is one of the more popular programs, but it could be improved by addressing the problems with it.

The Earned Income Tax Credit has recently (in 2021, for tax year 2020) given out about $3,100 on average to qualifying families with children. The Congressional Research Service reports that in 2021, “26.0 million taxpayers (16% of all taxpayers filing an individual income tax return) received a total of $59 billion from the EITC, making the credit the largest need-tested antipoverty program that provides cash benefits.” 

Overall, the Earned Income Tax Credit program plays a critical role in reducing economic inequality, promoting employment and helping support low income families by giving them a safety net in case their income is not enough to live in this economy. It is a great way to promote hard work while also handing out extra cash for those in need. Studies have already shown many improvements and with the help of reforming the current policies and making programs even better by addressing its issues that were not seen before, our society can then grow and increase the wealth of our economy exponentially.

https://tax.illinois.gov/programs/eitc/max-income.html

https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/earned-income-tax-credit-eitc/#:~:text=Weaknesses%20of%20the%20EITC,workers%20with%20and%20without%20children

https://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-the-earned-income-tax-credit

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/humaff-2019-0008/html?lang=en#:~:text=Recent%20studies%20show%20that%20low,who%20perceive%20all%20these%20changes.

Reaction Essay on Child Poverty Documentaries

 After watching the documentaries regarding child poverty in America, I had a lot of strong emotions. My first emotions had to do with the most obvious issues of children being poor, hungry, and homeless. Nobody, especially children, should have to experience those kinds of things in a developed country like the U.S. I also got strong waves of emotion watching children take on adult stress and roles. Shaun, for example, admitted that at age 13, he had already taken on a father figure role in his home. He, as well as some of the other children across the documentaries, also admitted to suppressing their feelings when it came to their hardships. These children felt not only the stress coming from their parents, but also took it upon themselves to hold in their own stress in order to save their parents from that added despair. You could just see how pained their parents’ pain made them. It was also striking to hear these children describe adult things such as making money/food stretch and timing and foregoing bills. The children’s stress was so visible, and it hit home. 

When thinking of solutions to the issues surrounding child poverty, child tax credits come to mind. While I’m sure these provide periodic bursts of relief for struggling parents, I also realize that the money they are refunded cannot be saved and applied to the coming year’s worth of expenses. There are bills to pay, necessities to buy, etc. Even more, the child tax credit program was implemented far before either of these documentaries were filmed, and not one person mentioned them as being helpful at all. In my opinion, families, especially those headed by single parents, need a more frequent, reliable form of stimulus. For families such as the ones featured in these films, anything helps. An extra $50…$100…$300 dollars would’ve kept food on their children’s plates, or maybe it would’ve kept the hot water on. I truly believe that families below and near the poverty line need more of a cash safety net. Not only could it help provide life’s necessities, as people in a developed country should have, but it can also help stimulate the economy. More cash means more dollars spent in the market. 

Speaking of the market, I also couldn’t help but notice the fact that some of the families in the documentaries lived in what appeared to be ghost towns. One of the children walked through her town scrounging up aluminum cans for money, and she could point to countless empty buildings and say, “this used to be…”. As she did this, I realized that the absence of businesses in her town also meant the absence of jobs. This child in particular talked a lot about how her mother had to be very careful when it came to using her car’s gas, but what if she didn’t have to go far to make money? Similarly, another family drove two total hours a day to get their father to his job. Unsteady unemployment is a huge contributor to poverty. We need more well-paying jobs, especially in under-stimulated areas of society (which also happened to have the most poverty). 

We’ve talked about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and how detrimental they can be on a child’s development into adulthood. The children in these films dealt with bullying, food insecurity, housing insecurity, and parents’ tempers. These children had already experienced as much, if not more, stress than others see over the course of their entire lives. It was clear, to me at least, that these children were extremely pessimistic about their own life outcomes. In the film that revisits some of the children 5 years later, not a single one showed up happy and full of life. They were tired. They wanted out. They hadn’t seen success. Having a happier, healthier society begins with improving the lives of children. And to do this, I think we need to offer families and local economies more support. 

Documentaries we watched included:

Growing up Poor in America (2020)

Poor Kids (2017)

Poor Kids (2012)

I am so glad you mentioned the child tax credit.  Increasing that and making it refundable was done as the 2020 documentary was being filmed, so the documentary did not capture the way this increase in consumption affected the lifestyles of those families. We know statistically that the increases in SNAP benefits and the child tax credit made a tremendous improvement (decrease) in child poverty (if we use the measure of poverty that examines post-tax / post-benefit actual consumption).  Having been in farmers markets selling produce in the summer of 2021 I can testify to the huge increase in purchasing power the benefits created (money that partly came to me as I was selling expensive peaches, berries, and cherries to families that now could afford them for their children). 

You also point out the importance of considering the environment and community economic life. As social workers who are interested in ending poverty, we must be concerned with the well-being of employers, businesses, entrepreneurs, local banks and credit units, and we must support main street civic boosters and chambers of commerce (up to a point), because we have common interests in the well-being of our local economies, for it is the local economy that offers a good chance for people to find their way out of poverty. 

You also paid attention to the way poverty inflicted ACEs on the children, and you are aware of how this torment and stress experienced by the children degraded their quality of their human existence. By tolerating the existence of poverty for children in our society, we are stealing years of life from them.  The stresses of poverty raise health problems, which in turn shorten the lives of adults who experienced poverty as children. 

When our society finished the project of defeating the ethno-nationalist imperialism of the Nazi and Japanese empires, there was a near consensus that we should create a world in which all people would be free from the tyranny of poverty and deprivation (one of the four freedoms: freedom of speech; freedom of worship; freedom from want; freedom from fear). We have lost our way, and instead of conquering the belligerent dictator "poverty" and his goons "want", we accept them as useful allies in our society to compel workers to take unpleasant jobs and submit to the caprice and whims of their employers or would-be employers.  We have the power to end poverty in our society, and with it, we would end a significant portion of the social ills and medical or behavioral problems our citizens face. The quality of our workplaces would improve, and our tax burdens would not substantially increase in a way that altered our standards of living.  Yet, we lack the vision and political will to end poverty, and the children in these documentaries damn us all by the tragedies we force them to experience by our unwillingness to restructure our economy to remove the scourge of poverty.

Student suggests after Community Eligibility Provision is eliminated, Springfield ought to continue making lunches free for all students in District 186

Dear Mayor Jim Langfelder,

I appreciate that you are taking the time to read my proposal and I promise that you will not be disappointed with what I have to say. Currently, I am a junior Social Work major at the University of Illinois Springfield, with plans to get my MSW and become a DCFS Investigator in Illinois. I am very passionate about this subject, and after reading this, I hope you are too. 

For years I have lived with the gnawing feeling of guilt that there are hundreds and hundreds of children in Springfield that do not receive adequate meals every day. These children live in a world where going without a meal or two every single day is normal, but just because it is normal for them, does not mean it is right. We live in one of the most developed countries in the world, yet we allow our children to go hungry. Thinking about this issue in that context makes it feel like an impossible feat to conquer, and that is why I am writing you this letter today. 

Even though we cannot change the entire country’s hunger crisis, we can take steps to change our cities. That is why I am proposing the policy of Free Universal School Lunch for all children attending public schools throughout Springfield, Illinois. The children that already get free or reduced lunches are forced to be ridiculed by peers (and sometimes staff) every single day because of their qualification for free lunches, and the ones that have lunch debt, that their parents cannot pay, are oftentimes made to eat nothing but a cold sandwich and a milk. 

After reading the article “America’s New School Lunch Policy: Punishing Hungry Students for Their Parents Poverty,” Steven Singer elaborates on a few ideas policymakers have had to punish poor parents for their child’s lunch debt. One policy was created by the Trump Administration and was “a plan to tighten eligibility requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that could result in hundreds of thousands of the poorest children losing automatic eligibility for free school lunches,” which makes no sense because, although it is punishing parents, this will only create more families with lunch debt. Another ridiculous idea is forcing children whose parents cannot pay their lunch debt to be put in foster homes (Steven Singer describes how school officials in Wyoming Valley West school district in Pennsylvania warned parents that they could be taken to dependency court if they did not pay school lunch debts, and threatened that a plausible result could be having their children placed in foster care). As if our country does not already have a serious enough issue with too many children in the foster care system. Finally, “the [Pennsylvania] state legislature even voted in June to reinstate lunch shaming—the practice of denying lunch or providing low-cost meals to students with unpaid lunch bills’ (Singer). That just proves how little Pennsylvania cares for its children, the literal future of this country. But, I hope Illinois is different.  

So, why should you consider consider implementing healthy Universal Free School Lunches in the city of Springfield, Illinois?

For many children, school lunch is the only nutrition they receive. Yet just recently, the Trump Administration posed to “...lower nutrition standards for the National School Lunch Program...” which only hinders the “...13 million or more children living in food-insecure households” that may only get their school lunch as a meal in any given day (M. Carney). The idea that our children matter so little to this administration that they will take away nutritious meals to save a buck is absolutely beyond my comprehension. It proves where their priorities lie, which is not in humanity, but rather in the economy. I’m glad that you are not like them.

Implementing Universal Free School Lunch in Springfield would not only improve the “health and nutrition” of our children but would also save us from the issues of student lunch debt and humiliating children whose parents cannot afford to pay for their lunches (M. Carney). It probably comes as no surprise that schools segregate the children who have free or reduced lunches from their peers. I myself experienced this segregation. When I was growing up, I received free lunches, and I remember my peers being aware of this because the kids that had free or reduced lunches were forced to stand at the back of the line. I am still unaware as to why my school did this, but sometimes I feel as if they were somehow punishing us for our parent’s poverty. As I got older, we began scanning our fingers to get our lunches, and all the kids who had free lunches did not have to scan their fingers – again reiterating the fact that we were poor. On top of this humiliation, I had to watch my mother struggle to put adequate meals on the table for my sister and me while she oftentimes had to go without. So, the fact that my school was humiliating me for poverty that was beyond my control while I also had to watch my family struggle to make ends meet, showed me how little the adults running the system care about children. These experiences I had as a child are why I am so passionate about providing a system that not only provides adequate and healthy meals for its children but also saves families the burden and embarrassment of applying for free or reduced lunches.

On top of saving families from these burdens, Universal Free School Lunches benefit the schools as well. This may not seem true because the money for these lunches must come from somewhere and people automatically assume it would be coming out of the school districts pocket. According to the article “Universal Free School Meals: Comparing Funding Options to Create Hunger-Free Schools,” there are three different school meal funding options that would provide healthy and free meals for all children (Universal 1). In other words, there are options that provide the funding schools need for this, at no cost to them, with other benefits included. Some of these benefits are reduced or eliminated stigma, elimination of the financial barrier of paying for school meals, reduction in paperwork for school nutrition staff, streamlined meal service operations, elimination of the hassle of dealing with unpaid meal debt, and fewer students turned away due to inability to pay (Universal 1). This funding not only directly helps the kids and their families, but also helps save the schools from the immense burden of the free and reduced lunch system. 

The first funding, according to this article, is the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which gives “high-poverty schools... when the identified student percentage is at least 40%...” the funding to feed the students both breakfast and lunch for free (Universal 1). This would help in Springfield because in school district 186 we have 55.4% of our children described as low-income (see the School Report Card from the IBSE at https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/district.aspx?districtid=51084186025&source=studentcharacteristics&source2=lowincome). CEP would also make it easier on the school itself because they would no longer have to worry about lunch debt and free/reduced lunch paperwork. There is no impact on education funds because 

“Schools are federally reimbursed based on the Identified Student Percentage (ISP). The ISP is multiplied by 1.6 to determine the percentage of meals served that will be reimbursed at the federal free meal rate. The remainder of meals served will be reimbursed at the federal paid meal rate. A group of schools using CEP receives school meal reimbursements based on the total enrollment and total ISPs of all schools in the group” (Universal 2).

In other words, all of the money used on the meals will be fully reimbursed at no cost to the school. This is a viable option, the only problem being that not every school in Springfield would apply, just the schools where over 40% of the student body is living in poverty.

Here are the percentages of low-income students at the middle schools and high schools in District 186:

19%   Iles Elementary (which has a middle school program): 32%  Springfield High School 48% Franklin Middle School (541 students) 56% Springfield Southeast High School63% Lanphier High School 61% Grant Middle School 71% Springfield Learning Academy73% Jefferson Middle School 74% Washington Middle School

The second funding, called Provision 2, allows all school districts to be eligible to give their students free breakfast and/or lunch (Universal 1). This is obviously different from CEP because it does not exclude any district. Again, schools would no longer have to worry about the tedious paperwork of free and reduced lunch. This is a good option because there could be a lot of children in districts that CEP excludes that need the free lunches even if majority of their peers do not. There is no impact on education funding because

“In the first/base year, schools count the meals served by fee category (free, reduced-price, or paid) and determine the percentage of meals served in each fee category. All meals are offered at no cost to all students during the first/base year. In years 2-4, schools receive reimbursement based on the percentage of meals served in each fee category during the base year” (Universal 2).

In other words, these schools are reimbursed for the free lunches offered to all students regardless of whether they are free, reduced, or paid. Again, this option is different from CEP because it offers funding to any school district that wants it, rather than solely on the districts that are “-high-poverty" (Universal 2).

The third provision, called Non-Pricing, allows any school district eligibility to offer its students free breakfast and/or lunch (Universal 1). This is different from CEP but the same as Provision 2. Like the other two, schools would no longer have to worry about student lunch debt and free/reduced lunch paperwork. Schools are federally reimbursed for meals “... based on the number of meals served in each of the fee categories (free, reduced-price, and paid). No fees are collected from students” (Universal 2). In other words, the schools will be reimbursed for the meals, regardless of whether the student falls into the category of free, reduced, or paid lunches. The only issue with Non-Pricing is that there is a possibility that it could potentially impact education funding. 

Without a doubt, there are provisions that schools can use in order to provide their students with free meals at school, at no cost to the school. On top of this no-cost for the school, it helps erase the burden lunch debt has on schools and eliminates the extra-work of paperwork dietary staff must deal with. Students would no longer have to be humiliated if they received free or reduced lunches, and kids that somehow do not qualify that need to qualify, would no longer have the burden of receiving inadequate meals (cold sandwich and milk) because their parent cannot afford to pay their lunch fines.

This is a policy that I would very much like you to consider because, unlike our federal government, you can choose to care more about the people than ‘the money.’ Students, regardless of their parent’s poverty, should be provided adequate and nutritious meals. Rather than having ridiculous guidelines on free or reduced lunch eligibility, that some students who need it do not receive because guidelines are so strict, we should be providing all students with universal free school lunch. It is obvious that there is immense poverty riddled throughout Springfield, and this is one step we can take to release some burden off of parent’s shoulders. 

Thank you so much for your time and consideration of this policy,

Here are some more numbers to think concretely about this issue.

Springfield’s District has 14,063 students, and 55% of those are low income students (from households with income low enough to receive free meals or reduced-price 40¢ meals). The income threshold for free meals is 130% of poverty, and the threshold for 40¢ meals is 185% of poverty.  For a single parent with one child in school, the thresholds in 2020 would be $1,828 per month for free lunches and $2,658 per month for reduced price lunches. Assuming those single parents were working full time, for 155 hours per month, their hourly wages would be below $12.05 per hour to get free lunches and below $17.15 per hour to get the reduced priced lunches for their child.

  https://www.fdacs.gov/Food-Nutrition/Nutrition-Programs/National-School-Lunch-Program/Financial-Management/Reimbursement-Rates 

Currently, the Federal government supports school lunches with about $3.42 per child who gets a free lunch, $3.02 for children who get reduced-priced lunches, and $0.33 for students who pay for their own school lunches (the kids making fun of those who got free lunches didn’t really know that the government was paying over 30¢ to keep their lunch costs down, did they?)  Assume that the 55% of students in 186 are divided with 91% of those getting free lunches and 9% getting reduced priced lunches, (that estimate is based on the fact that nationally there are 20.2 million free lunches and 1.8 million reduced price lunches and 7.7 million full price lunches, for which the government is subsidizing about 32¢ per meal, served each day in the USA (https://schoolnutrition.org/aboutschoolmeals/schoolmealtrendsstats/) 

That would mean each day 7,102 students are getting free lunches and 633 are getting reduced-price lunches. Assume 3/4 of the remaining children buy school lunches at full price (and others bring lunches from home instead of buying school lunches), and that means 4,726 buy “full price” lunches at $3.42 per meal and 1,582 bring meals made at home.  So, we get this:

	children	Feds pay	Kids pay	Actual cost to district for providing meals	Net to school per meal	School District income each meal
Free	7102	$3.42	$0.00	$3.00	$0.42	$2,982.84
40¢	633	$3.02	$0.40	$3.00	$0.42	$265.86
Full Price	4726	$0.32	$2.75	$3.00	$0.07	$330.82
From Home	1582	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00

If we provided free meals to everyone without participating in the CEP:

	children	Feds pay	Kids pay	Actual cost to district for providing meals	Net to school per meal	School District income each meal
Free	7102	$3.42	$0.00	$3.00	$0.42	$2,982.84
40¢	633	$3.02	$0.00	$3.00	$0.02	$12.66
Full Price	4726	$0.32	$0.00	$3.00	-$2.68	-$12,665.68
From Home	1582	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00

So, if there were no other sources of income, and meals cost the District $3.00 per child per meal, the district would be losing $9,670 per day to cover the cost of giving everyone a free lunch (assuming there were still about 1,600 kids who didn’t come to school that day or came and brought their own lunches). With 175 days in a school year (https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/District.aspx?source=environment&source2=numberschooldays&Districtid=51084186025) we multiply $9,670 by 175 to see that offering free lunches to all students will cost about $1,692,000 per year.  There would also be cost savings associated with having no personnel collecting money for the free lunches, but on the other hand, the district would probably charge for treats and extra drinks and other things not on the regular lunch menu, so the total cost savings on labor are perhaps in the order of only about 4,000 labor hours per year, which might bring the net cost down to $1,650,000.  District 186 has a budget of $130 million, but the state estimates that it needs $190 million to adequately fulfill its mission of educating all the children.  A shift of resources from where the district had been earning $626,000 per year on the school lunch system, to one where it was spending $1.65 million would reallocate about 2% of the school district’s resources from its education mission to its health & nutrition mission.  If we could increase the school’s overall budget through contributions from city and county governments, or raise taxes slightly, maybe we could raise 3% or 4% of the funding for our school, and then that would cover the free lunches and give us a little left over to help get from our current $130 million toward the desired (needed) $190 million.

Raising the money to cover the free lunches after the federal government stops paying for this would require about $2 million in additional revenue.  That would work out to something like $60 per household (that is a very approximate and rough estimate). Each household in Springfield would pay about $5.00 per month in additional taxes to feed the children in Springfield. Landlords would raise rents by an additional $5 per month.  I think if you explained the benefits to this, and how it helps us create the sort of society we want, you might get people to look at that extra cost in their taxes and decide it is a worthwhile investment, and you could pass a tax increase to cover this.

Looking at the District 186 website, it seems that in school year 2018-19 the school was participating in CEP, and lunches were free for everyone in District 186. 

Community Eligibility Provision (CEP)All schools in District #186 are part of the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) through the National School Lunch and Breakfast Program. CEP will be providing all students a healthy breakfast and lunch each day at no charge to the students for the school year 2018-2019. Although students receive a meal at no cost, they will still be able to purchase extra items (extra milk, juice, water, etc.) at a nominal cost.

References

Chaney, M. (2018, December 14). Making Healthy School Lunches Free for All Should Be a National Priority. Civil Eats. https://civileats.com/2018/12/14/making-healthy-school-lunches-free-for-all-should-be-a-national-priority/

Universal Free School Meals: Comparing Funding Options to Create Hunger-Free Schools. No Kid Hungry. Retrieved February 20, 2020, from http://bestpractices.nokidhungry.org/sites/default/files/providing-universal-free-school-meals_0.pdf

Singer, S. (2019, July 24). America’s New School Lunch Policy: Punishing Hungry Students for Their Parent’s Poverty. Common Dreams. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/07/24/americas-new-school-lunch-policy-punishing-hungry-students-their-parents-poverty

Reading $2 A Day makes one student concerned about inadequate policies and services

During the course so far we have spent lots of time reading the book “$2.00 A Day.” This books focuses on a few families in different situations among those in poverty, and how they are managing to survive. The authors write about a range of families consisting of one single mom and her kid to families that have up to 20 or more people living in a two or three-bedroom apartment, where sometimes there are more kids than adults. The book also tells about the welfare system in the different cities, and even states, in which these families live, and how welfare programs help, or rather do not help, them in their struggle to survive. The authors explain what resources are available for these families and what resources are not, and how these families cope with their lack of resources and lack of support. The book ends with ways that the government and the public can work to implement plans of action that could truly help these people living in the lowest form of poverty to rise above the “$2.00 a day” threshold of extreme poverty, and help them get possibly even closer to a decent and stable life. 

While reading this book, the stories from these people and the situations that they have encountered impressed me. They experienced heart-breaking misfortune and miserable instability. Thinking about the kids in these situations caused me some empathic sadness, as they will grow up not knowing anything else and thinking that this way of life is totally normal and fine. Eventually when they get old enough they will realize what kind of conditions and life they are living in, but until then they won’t even realize that they are not getting to experience the basic childhood that every child should get to experience. It was also very upsetting to think about little kids going hungry and crying themselves to sleep, and how terrible that must have made their moms feel. I cannot even imagine how much it emotionally hurt the moms to listen to their kids cry themselves to sleep from hunger and to not be able to provide for them food because she had to sell the family SNAP supply for cash to keep the heat and lights on. It was also very discouraging to hear that some moms are practically killing themselves, physically, just to give their kids the chance to go to school and wear the uniform and have school supplies so that they have at least have some time in their lives where they feel normal and feel like they belong. The unstable housing otherwise deprived them of having a place where they could belong.

When I was reading about how some of these families have been in multiple homeless shelters over the course of a few months to a year, because the shelters have a time limit in which a family can stay, it was not only very upsetting but also slightly infuriating that we as a country are allowing for this to happen and allowing for families with children to live like this. No body, especially young children who are at very crucial points in development, should have to live a life where they are always moving or getting asked to leave from places that are the only thing ensuring at least some amount of safety for them during the night. I also fully believe that if someone is still trying to find work actively, like one of the mothers in this book was doing, then they should not have to worry about being kicked out of the shelter and worried about finding a new place to stay. I can understand, however right or wrong, asking someone to leave after three or four months of staying in the same shelter if they are not actively seeking a job or trying to find a way out, but if a resident is really trying then they should be allowed to stay and not have to worry about a time limit before getting asked to leave.

Another shocking factor in this book is the amount of illegal activity that so many families have to—regretfully and not very willingly—participate in just to survive. Without partaking in some of the illegal measures discussed in this book, families risk starving to death, freezing to death, or not being able to get money for rent and therefore getting thrown out on to the street with nowhere to go. These practices also allowed for some families to have water for using the restroom, cooking, and bathing. For those who had a car, they also needed the cash from these transactions to buy gas to keep the car going. As a result of many very poor families needing cash, not just government issued debit cards, many families had to result to selling their SNAP benefits, their kids’ social security numbers for others to claim them as dependents, and even their bodies (for the women mainly) in order to bring in any cash that they possibly could. In some instances, some females would have sex with men, sometimes older or younger than them, in exchange for food because they were desperately hungry. Often times, these situations of women having sex with different men would lead to more pregnancies and therefore more mouths to try and feed and house. This, to me, is just sickening. In response to try and survive, the problem ends up growing and more problems result, such as STDs among the women and girls having sex with several men.

In response to these situations happening all over our country, we as Americans need to step up to the plate and work to improve and eventually end this vicious cycle that so many good, hard-working Americans are trapped in. Americans need to push for better funding and better programs to help those on the very bottom, as well push for stronger regulations on where the money goes and what it is actually used for. They need to make sure that states or agencies are not cheating those people who really need the money out of it for the states’ own needs, but instead that all of the government money for the welfare programs is going towards helping those who truly need it. There also needs to be greater support from the American people for the private agencies and organizations/groups working towards doing their part in ending the suppression of those on the very bottom. With more support from Americans as a whole, and across the country, the chance of eliminating severe poverty especially, and at least lessoning the number of those in poverty, will significantly grow. This is a problem that is going to take effort from at least the majority of the country’s citizens and the government in order to eliminate or at least improve.

Your reaction to the cries of the children who were sobbing because they were so hungry and there was nothing to feed them reminds me of that old Brecht musical, which has the lines:

Ihr Herrn, die ihr uns lehrt, wie man brav leben

Und Sünd und Missetat vermeiden kann

Zuerst müßt ihr uns was zu fressen geben

Dann könnt ihr reden: damit fängt es an.

Ihr, die ihr euren Wanst und unsre Bravheit liebt

Das eine wisset ein für allemal:

Wie ihr es immer dreht und wie ihr's immer schiebt

Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.

Erst muß es möglich sein auch armen Leuten

Vom großen Brotlaib sich ihr Teil zu schneiden.

This reaction essay captures the general process of converting a person toward an attitude of greater sympathy to the plight of paupers, and eliciting from them a greater commitment to seeing improved anti-poverty policies and services, greater volunteerism, and a heightened sense of priorities related to caring for persons experiencing poverty.  You read realistic accounts of the struggles people face, and this provoked a powerful reaction, and to cope with the reaction, you are suggesting better policies and services. Bear in mind that this is an effective way to educate people to gain their support for any suggestion of improved policies (like providing stable housing assurances to the poorest of the poor); you need to let people hear stories about how harmful it is for children to live without stable housing.