Student strongly opposes current immigration detention practices

 Immigration has been occurring since the beginning of time. Everyone residing in the United States, besides Native Americans, all have immigrated. In today’s world immigration is seen as this horrendous act, and this perception honestly upsets me. There have been immigration detention camps where authorities separated children from their families. Literally, breaking families apart. Before this anti-immigrant viewpoint was dominant, families were able to stick together. It degrades America’s reputation when so many in our society perceive immigration as such an awful and dangerous thing. 

Separating families is really sickening, and that’s what America is constantly doing. Why do supporters of this policy think these people deserve such treatment? Yes, they came to America illegally, but that does not mean that our border guards should make the children suffer and be afraid because they don’t know when or if they’ll ever reconnect with their families.  American authorities could at least provide them with some essential care. We are in a pandemic and we are not doing much to protect those detained children. According to ice.gov, ICE focuses on smart immigration enforcement, preventing terrorism and combating the illegal movement of people and trade. If that’s the case, they should not have to separate these families. If their jobs are to prevent immigration, then they should keep the families together. 

According to the ICE website, “ICE is committed to ensuring that those in our custody reside in safe, secure, and human environments and under appropriate conditions of confinement.” Just a couple of weeks ago, news broke out that those detained in these detention camps were undergoing unnecessary gynecological surgeries including full hysterectomies. That should show people, and the world, that the persons running these detention facilities are taking cruel advantage of the detainees. They have no right to perform such surgeries with the detainees unless the detainees themselves have agreed to do so, but even that brings problems, because someone may be lying to the detainees and telling them that something else will be done, when in result this is what is occurring. 

The Netflix documentary called Immigration Nation, came out this year, and it gives us a better insight on how ICE approaches immigrants. That documentary brought tears to my eyes because I witnessed men crying due to the fact that they were separated from their children and they were not reconnected with them until days, months later, not knowing where they were at and with who. These detainees were lied to, being told they were going somewhere to reconnect, but in reality, they were going to a prison. I recommend that Netflix documentary, because it shows these peoples’ true colors. It upset me when one of the ICE officers took a picture of one of the detainees, sent the picture to his “buddies” and laughed at him. That was so inappropriate and disturbing to watch. The Trump Administration feel like they are doing something, but they are really affecting these children, young children. 

Overall, I understand on the issues that The USA tries to do to prevent people from immigrating, but there needs to be a better solution. No family should be separated. I feel for these people because they are my people and it could happen to my family to anyone. Immigration has been here since the start of time and if back then they were able to work things out, I am positively sure something good could also come back out of this, but separating families should not be a punishment for people who want a better life. Being treated poorly and being performed surgeries at these detention camps should not be occurring. Trying to better and be there for these people should matter. 

This is a strongly-felt reaction essay to a real problem. Social workers have core values related to social justice and the dignity and worth of the individual, and we also are committed to promoting good human relationships. There is one issue where reasonable persons disagree: how many immigrants should be allowed to come to the United States, and what criteria should be considered when deciding whom to allow here? The issue addressed here is a separate one, asking how we treat persons who come here without appropriate documentation, or fail to leave here when their allowed time here has expired. The basic assumption most people would make is that such persons ought to be returned to their home countries, or to the countries from which they have arrived. But, the principles of human rights compel us to provide protection and security to persons who are fleeing persecution or threats to their lives (according to Articles 3 and 14 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), so there should be exception to the general rule of expelling such persons.  

There might also be good reason to allow some non-citizens who have long resided in the United States as undocumented residents to remain her and perhaps become citizens; if they have been productive members of society, never committed serious crimes, and have lived her so long that culturally they have become Americanized, it would have in fact, if not in law, become Americans (in the cultural, not the legal sense), and depriving them of living here as Americans would be a sort of deprivation of their adopted nationality (a violation of Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).  I'm starting with a premise that shared life experiences and real human relationships create reality, and the state and its laws and those who enforce its laws are a sort of secondary and artificial social construct that has a purpose of protecting our rights and facilitating conditions in which we can flourish and depend on enforcement of justice. If laws create situations of unfairness and injustice, and thwart human flourishing and inflict misery, then rather than simply break those laws, it would be better to amend or replace them. Leaving bad laws in place and breaking them can create lawless situations, and it is better to make good or better laws to replace those that seem to produce evil conditions.

The issue of family separation is one of these evil conditions. Children should remain with their parents (Articles 12, 16, 25, and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights all imply this, I think).  It is also a bad thing to imprison minors with adults. So, while it make sense that adults and minors should not be detained or imprisoned together, there clearly must be an exception for parents with children. And in fact, if people have a reasonable expectation that they will suffer in their country of origin, I think they ought to be allowed to roam freely in America, and not detained. We need a system that can quickly determine whether persons have realistic fears, and if they do, they should be offered asylum or assistance in setting up a new life somewhere safe (e.g., Queretaro, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Tabasco, Oaxaca, Belize, Costa Rica, Panama) 

Americans who want to block those immigrants from living here could probably make a case that they should seek refuge in the first safe country they arrive in, and not wait until they cross to the USA to seek refuge.  For example, if Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are all so violent and chaotic that a person is not save in any of those countries, persons fleeing from those lands should be encouraged to seek refuge in Nicaragua, Belize, Mexico, Costa Rica, or Panama before coming to the USA. 

Some people have suggested that when children were apprehended by ICE agents, their parents were not with them, and persons who claimed to be their parents were in fact kidnappers or child human traffickers who only pretended to be parents. If there are any cases where this was so, those would be cases where children would end up I detention apart from their parents, but we could not blame ICE for such a situation. Also, the accusations against the gynecologist in Georgia who allegedly performed unwanted and unnecessary surgeries has not been settled, and the doctor and prison, as you point out, claims the accusations are unfair.  I certainly am inclined to believe the 17 women (or is it more?) who have made the accusations, but until the situation is thoroughly investigated, I cannot really know what happened.  What I do know is that the conditions in which the detained persons are being held are violating their human rights.  As those persons are in the custody of the United States, we all are responsible for the conditions in which they are held.  They are clearly not being shown respect for the dignity of their person, or their worth.  They are not receiving adequate medical care, and since they are in our care, we have a duty to provide such care to them. Further, our immigration processes are unfair and unjust, and people live here (in detention or not in detention) in a state of uncertainty and doubt while they wait for immigration authorities to make determinations on their claims or their appeals. The waiting time is very longer and during the wait these people are in a precarious state.  As you say, there are many outrageous and disgusting aspects of how we (our government) is treating these people, and we must push our government to improve the immigration process and the detention conditions.

The Budget of the State of Illinois

 

I’ve spent several hours studying the Illinois State Comptroller’s website.  It has not been designed in a way that helps the public understand the big picture of where money goes.  I have taken figures from the FY 2020 allocations to create this budget picture of state budget allocations:

The Illinois Public Outlays in FY2020

I think this chart is based on outlays that include money that is not raised through Illinois revenue; that is, it represents state spending that comes from state sources and state spending that is allocations of federal dollars given to the state. So, other charts showing spending might only show spending of funds that are in general revenue funds or dedicated funds that accumulate from Illinois sources (like taxes on gasoline or marijuana, or fishing and hunting licenses, and so forth). 

Oddly enough, the Transportation budget was reported as being $32 billion, the largest item in the budget.  I think this was an exceptionally large amount, due to a capital improvement bill getting passed, so in normal years that would have been significantly less. Likewise, the capital development board had $9.6 billion appropriated to give out for construction projects and renovations. 

Healthcare and Family Services, which is mostly payments to doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, dentists, and so forth, made through health management organizations, using Medicaid funding (the state gets about half the money back from the Federal government in Medicaid spending), was the next largest item, and in years without a capital improvements act, it would be the largest item, at $26.6 billion.

K-12 Education was the third largest allocation from the state, at $13.55 billion.  There is also money raised at the local level through property taxes, so the state and local combined spending on education is much higher.

Illinois has not adequately funded pensions for state employees, but that is a priority now, and $9.6 billion was allocated for pensions.

Central Management had a budget of $7.88 billion.  Nothing on the Comptroller really explained that.  There needs to be more useful information for average citizens about some of the budget items.  I think the Comptroller ought to do a better job.

Human Services had a budget of $7.1 billion. Some of that is federal money that just passes through the state government, like Women and Infants and Children programs ($0.394 billion). One of the largest items in the Human Services budget is the $1.257 billion for Community Based Services for Persons with Developmental Disabilities and for Intermediate Care Facilities.  Mental health grants and program support were at $0.303 billion, but probably ought to be funded at over $1 billion.  Grants associated with Child Care Services were $0.402 billion. Those probably ought to be closer to $0.8 billion.

The Department of Revenue had appropriations of $6.44 billion, and much of that was in the form of tax refunds.  I think that would include the Illinois State Earned Income Tax Credit, but the Comptroller’s ledger didn't break that down.  

   Commerce and Economic Opportunity had $5.11 billion.  I hope much of that money goes to investments in low-income communities, or state investment in training people to start worker-owned cooperatives and other forms of democratic capitalism.

  Higher Education had allocations of $4.2 billion.  Not nearly enough.  It ought to be at least $6 billion, and probably much more even than that.

Environmental Protection had a budget of $3.23 billion.

Our state has not had a balanced budget in quite a while, and service on our debt cost the state $3.1 billion.

Children and Family Services (child protection services, foster care, adoptions, and that sort of thing) had appropriations of $1.35 billion.  Probably $1.5 billion is more like what we need.

Corrections had a budget of $1.6 billion, but that does not include the budgets for county and city jails, which probably had a similar cost, if not possibly more in aggregate, but that cost is paid by local sales and property taxes for the most part.  Still, the accusation that the “the state spends more on locking people up than educating them” is ridiculously false, as our state education budgets for K-12 and higher education are in excess of $17.7 billion before even factoring in local spending on schools and junior colleges.  Even if county and local jails cost twice-as-much as the state prison system, we would still only be spending $3.8 billion on locking people up. 

The Department on Aging only had appropriations of $1.3 billion.  That will need to go up as the state ages.

Elected Officers had a budget of $3.9 billion.  I do not understand what that represents.  I suppose it includes pensions as well as salaries for elected officers, but that is not just the governor and elected state officials (e.g., the Comptroller) plus all the members of the Illinois General Assembly, is it?  It must include their staff members as well, I suppose.  But, there is also a budget category for the legislature, and that is $0.5 billion ($500 million), which seems enough to pay for lots of legislative staff. 

The idea that we ought to de-fund the police to support mental health services and alternative approaches to non-violent and nuisance crimes may make sense at the level of local budgets in cities and counties, but at the level of the state government, Illinois puts up $69 million for the State Police.  While I think mental health services should be increased substantially, I do not think the money required to meet our needs could be found in a budget item that is only $69 million, when we need $1,500 million more for mental health and substance abuse prevention/treatment, in my opinion.

Anyway, that is an overview of the appropriations for the State of Illinois budget as it was last year (FY 2020 ended on June 30 of 2020, and we are now in FY 2021).  If these numbers are wrong, blame Susana A. Mendoza, our Comptroller. She may not think it is the duty of her office to explain the budget or give the public reports that show how the state spends its money so that common people can understand it (I have a doctorate and have studied public policy and economics, and even I was confused by the information on the website). Perhaps that is what the Treasurer or the Governor should do.  I often rely on people like the staff at the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability to explain the budget.  Rich Miller and Charlie Wheeler also help us understand.

Student reflects on elder abuse

 Ways to Reduce Elder Abuse using Education

Elder Abuse is all too common in our society today.  I am a nursing technician in the emergency room at St. John’s Hospital and have witnessed such events.  I have seen physical abuse, such as bruises and broken bones to emotional abuse.  I am writing this blog, to help bring awareness to elder abuse and my goal is to educate the population, on ways to be aware of possible abuse and to help prevent further cases of abuse.  

According to the CDC, each year hundreds of thousands of adults over the age of 60 are abused, neglected, or financially exploited. Elder abuse, including neglect and exploitation, is experienced by 1 out of every 10 people, ages 60 and older, who live at home. This statistic is likely an underestimate because many victims are unable or afraid to disclose or report the violence.  They many forms of elder abuse are: 

• Physical
• Sexual
• Emotional
• Neglect
• Abandonment
• Financial Abuse 

There are many warning signs to look for, when questioning abuse of any kind, to an elderly person.  These could be: broken bones, changes in sleep patterns, poor living conditions, untreated bed sores, depression, anxiety and unusual changes in their bank account to name a few.  There are many ways that you can report elder abuse.  One way is to call Adult Protective Services.  Another way is to call the Long-Term Care Ombudsmen.  Their number is 1-800-677-1116.  If you feel that there is immediate danger to the person, always call 911 first.  

I feel that with education not only given to the public, but to caregivers of the elderly, we can greatly reduce the number of incidences of elder abuse in our country.  For example, making community supports and human services for caregivers and older adults can alleviate risk factors tied to elder abuse. Increased funding can support

efforts to train practitioners in aging-related care. Identifying ways to empower older adults will reduce the harmful effects of ageism.  Also, leveraging expert knowledge can provide the tool that are necessary to identify, address and prevent elder abuse.

the harmful effects of ageism. One way to help the caregivers of the elderly, is to provide support over-burdened caregivers with support such as:

• Help from friends, family, or local relief care groups
• Adult day care programs
• Counseling
• Outlets intended to promote emotional well-being

The older adult population is growing faster in the U.S. than are younger populations. Many older adults require care and are vulnerable to violence perpetrated by a caregiver or someone they trust. More research is needed to uncover the causes for, and solutions to, violence against older adults.

This is a thoughtful reaction essay. That figure that 1-in-10 older adults experiences some form of elderly abuse was terrifying. With 15.2% (49.2 million) persons aged 65 or older, we are estimating about 5 million older Americans experiencing abuse. That is a higher number of persons suffering from elder-abuse than the estimates for child abuse (estimates for the number of children experiencing abuse—just abuse, and not neglect—are under 1 million per year, about 770,000 if we use the harm standard rather than the endangerment standard, according to the NIS#4 of 2010). 

Some of those categories of elder abuse make me wonder what the situation actually looks like.  What is “abandonment” and how is “emotional abuse” measured? If healthy children stop maintaining contact with an elderly parent who is in the early stages of dementia, is that a form of elder abuse?  If a parent was generally cruel and distant from their children, when those children become adults, if they fail to care for their older parent as that parent becomes frail and requires care, are those adult children abusing the parent?  Clearly, there is much I should learn about elder abuse.

Extending the School Day and After School Programs

Being a single parent is most likely one of the hardest jobs someone could have. Despite how many kids one has, working and providing for them is extremely difficult. Finding affordable and safe childcare is hard. When their children get to school age, parents should be relieved that finally, they can send their child to school while they work. That is not the case we find, however. With the hours of school that is in session and not enough access to childcare, it is still hard for parents to find the balance between being a good worker and a good parent. The hours that schools run and the lack of before and after school childcare make it still very difficult for parents to find time to be with their kids.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average number of hours in the school day is 6.64. The average school day ends at about 2:50 or 3:00 and starts at 7:00 or 8:00. Those hours do not coincide with the hours adults work. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average number of hours for full-time workers is 8 hours. With the average workday starting at 9. Single jobholders also work 8 hours, and people with only a high school diploma work 8 hours as well. Parents have to come to the hard decision of either spending money on childcare or else taking off work to pick up or drop off their child or work. Parents should not have to decide between losing their job, money, or time with their families.  

Hours in the school day are not the only problem parents are facing. The lack of childcare is a battle as well. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2008, out of the 49,700 public elementary schools, 56% had some form of after school program. 46% had stand-alone daycare. Even 24% of areas with concentrated poverty have access to after school programs as well, according to the After School Alliance. That leaves a high number of families who are trying to make ends meet without any assistance from educational facilities. If school hours are inhibiting parents from attending work, having no childcare is also an issue. It also results negatively for children involved. Having no after school enrichment and assistance can contribute to low school involvement and commitment, higher drug, and alcohol use, and it increases the number of arrests. Not only does it help parents, but it also helps the students become successful. 

With these facts, schools changing hours to fit parents’ schedules better, and providing parents with better childcare makes sense. Parents should not have to choose between taking off work and not making money or having their children be in school. If the school day started at nine and ended around four, it would better accommodate the parents. These ideas would help parents by having them take their children to work before school. It would also help parents to find someone to pick up their child if needed. Parents would not have to leave work early or arrive late because they had to take their child to school. The increased access to after-school care would also assist families and, ultimately, the children by providing them with programs if they do have to work longer than 4:00. Teachers who work long hours can be paid overtime, and money for this bill can come from the federal level. The department of Education could use ESSA funds, and Title l can also increase to help. Programs such as the 21st Century and other after school care based programs could also provide more compensation for longer school days and better after school care. Let us help the families of our communities grow more reliable and better by providing more convenient school hours and expand after school care.

Shelter-in-home with E-learning widens learning gaps

Good Afternoon,

I write to you in hopes that you can help your fellow teachers, students, and parents.  Since the COVID-19 pandemic, our lives have been turned upside down.  As a society, we are being asked to do things outside of our normal routines and scope. While these changes may not all be bad, there are a few new roles that are proving to be difficult. 

One of the hardest things, as a mother, is the adjustment to distance learning that is expected of me and my children. The difficulty comes because even the environment makes a difference when it comes to learning. During non-COVID times, children learn in a controlled classroom on specific dates and times with teachers who are specially trained. The structure children are exposed to breeds learning. Children and parents are now being asked to continue to learn in unstructured environments, without specific dates and times available, and without specialized training. This has wreaked havoc on homes all across the nation. It has led students to feel unmotivated and frustrated. Parents feel an immense burden to keep their children up to speed with others who may or may not be in an environment suited for learning. 

There are many children who require special education services or alternate learning plan to succeed in “normal” times.  These children are now expected to learn and function in a less than conducive environment.  While government officials are saying that grades will not be impacted, there is little assurance that children who were already behind or who will fall behind now will be unaffected when school does resume. 

Instead of canceling school for the remainder of the current year, the schools were forced to put a rush on learning remotely, which has been a struggle for students, teachers, and parents.  Teachers were given only a few days to gather information and put a lesson plan together that would be delivered in a non-traditional way through the internet. 

Some teachers have since sent home packets for children to complete.  These packets, while easier to understand, still present challenges.  Parents are struggling to keep children engaged enough to complete assignments and often are busy themselves with working from home that they are worried their children aren’t completing their work. 

Some parents and children are thriving in the world of e-learning while others are not. The reality is that some parents are unable to make the time commitment to allow for children to thrive due to their employment or other limitations while others are simply undereducated and are having difficulty learning and then subsequently teaching the information. 

Together we can support our children in making sure that next year they will not have to deal with the fact that they fell behind or need re-teaching. 

It would be in the best interest of parents, students, and faculty to have school, e-learning included, suspended for the remainder of the school year. In the interest of giving students an equal chance to start the next year at the same level as their peers, I call you to take a stand and contact your local school board or the Illinois State Board of Education and demand changes to the current learning system.  We may not be able to see numbers and statistics of how this unforeseen situation has impacted our children yet, but we need to stand up for all children from all walks of life to ensure that there is no child is left behind.

Thank you and stay safe.

Protect persons who are LGBTQ+

Walking into a store or restaurant, most people wouldn’t even consider the possibility that they might be denied service. Even those people not wearing a shirt or shoes would move forward with confidence in procuring what they need. This isn’t the case for the LGBTQ+ population across the country. For this community, the reality is that they may live in a state where businesses and organizations are within their rights to deny them service. A 2015 study found that 63% of people who identify as LGBTQ+ have experienced some form of public accommodation discrimination. Most of these cases pass by with little to none media attention. This, however, wasn’t the case in the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission complaint.

In 2012, a recently married gay couple, Charlie Craig and David Mullins, requested a wedding cake be designed and baked by the Masterpiece Cakeshop where they lived in Colorado. The bakery, owned by Jack Phillips and run as an LLC, refused that service to the couple based on his belief that their marriage was a sin and that it violated his religious beliefs. The bakery did offer to sell the couple an already baked cake but would not design what the couple specifically wanted. The couple filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (CCRC) and the commission determined that the complaint was founded. The case would end up in front of the Supreme Court who, unfortunately, never got to the real issue of the case but focused on the response of the CCRC. In avoiding to address the issue of the discrimination, the Supreme Court inadvertently gave support to this type of behavior. 

There are debates happening at every level of government about the right for LGBTQ+ people to be treated equally in businesses and public places. Let that sit there for a minute…not to be given special rights or to offer extra protections but to be treated the same as everyone else. Public accommodation policies typically reference places that people visit outside of their home environment. Those include restaurants, retail stores, specialty shops and gyms but can also include public transportation, state offices like the DMV, and churches and healthcare facilities. The most well-known public accommodation law is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination in public accommodations based on race, color, and national origin. These laws are particularly important for the members of this community who are homeless or food insecure. Discrimination in shelters and social service organizations increase the individuals’ risk significantly by creating an environment in which community members feel unsafe. However, in the US today, men and women are still being discriminated against based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. According to the Movement Advancement Project’s (MAP) LGBT Policy Spotlight: Public Accommodations Nondiscrimination Laws:

Laws protecting people from discrimination in public accommodations based on sexual orientation and gender identity exist in only 19 states and the District of Columbia. And there are no federal nondiscrimination protections in public accommodations for any of these characteristics. As a result, just over half of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ+) people in the United States live in a state where businesses could refuse to serve them because of who they are.

Simply put, that means that they can be denied service based on who they love or how they identify in relation to their gender. Transgender people report a significant amount of discrimination; “According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey of nearly 28,000 people, transgender respondents reported being denied equal treatment or service, verbally harassed, or physically attacked at many places of public accommodation.”  (MAP, 2018, p. 2)  

Interestingly, the majority of Americans support the broadening of discrimination laws. The Civil Rights Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act cover a majority of the population that needs to be protected, and most Americans feel that the LGBTQ+ community should simply be added to those laws already in place. Based on a study done in 2015, 72% of the people polled believed that adding protections for this group was essential while only 23% oppose these types of laws. Similarly, half of Americans polled do not support laws that require that transgender people only use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex they were born with whole 38% favor such laws. (MAP, 2018) 

With the patchwork of state laws in place and the lack of a federal non-discrimination law, it is important more now than ever, that the rights of the LGBTQ+ community are forefront and addressed. Local and state lawmakers need to work to shore up current laws and ensure that all vulnerable populations are included. Those states, like Arizona, Florida, Michigan and Indiana, need to move to write and sign into law clear non-discrimination policies that cover all public accommodations. The federal government needs to work to update the protections already in place to include this community. Businesses need to ensure that they are serving everyone in their community and customers need to frequent the businesses that exhibit non-discriminatory practices. 

It can be shocking to realize that this type of discrimination is still occurring and is somehow considered to be acceptable. The need for these laws at all, laws that make clear that treating people unfairly is not ok, seems unimaginable. Advocating for these communities, demanding fair treatment from the businesses that people support, voting for laws and politicians who respect these communities are the steps that need to be taken in order to ensure equality and fairness for the LGBTQ+ community.

Movement Advancement Project. January 2018. LGBT Policy Spotlight: Public Accommodations Nondiscrimination Laws. https://www.lgbtmap.org/policy-spotlight-public-accommodations.

Please support universal free lunches

Citizens of Springfield,

I am writing this letter as a citizen that truly and deeply cares about the children in our community. It is of utmost importance that we take care of our children because they will one day be the lifeblood of our society. As children, we were all helpless in the face of our environments, which basically means we had no control where and what environment we grew up in. If we were born into privilege, we could not control that, just like we could not control if we were born into poverty. We were voiceless and incapable of truly taking care of ourselves. That is why it is our responsibility to be the voice of our children and do everything in our power to advocate and fight for their rights. 

Free Universal School Lunch will provide all children in our community with adequate school meals, both breakfast and lunch, which is sadly a luxury for too many children in Springfield. Many of you are already aware of the free and reduced school lunch system already in place, but may not know just how inefficient this system truly is. One major issue is the fact that there are many children that “fall through the cracks” because of the intensity and lengthiness of the paperwork needed to be filled out in order to qualify for free/reduced lunch. This is even more evident in families where English is not the primary language. No child should be left behind just because the paperwork is not accommodating. This also goes along with the strict qualifications families must meet in order to receive free/reduced lunches. Some families badly need free/reduced lunches for their children, but they barely miss the qualifications, so they are forced to pay for meals for their children (and oftentimes have large negative balances). Creating a system where all children are given free lunch would not only help these families out tremendously, but it would also save the school staff members a lot of time and trouble dealing with the paperwork and trying to get families to pay their negative balances. Another issue with this system already in place, is that it creates a breeding ground for humiliation and bullying because schools are oftentimes guilty of separating the children who need these accommodations from the ones who do not. This is an issue I was forced to experience firsthand.

Growing up with a single mother was very tough, and we struggled heavily to make ends meet. My mom always did everything she could to give us the happiest and most stable life possible, where we would not be looked down on because we did not have as much money as our peers. She did an incredible job and I am grateful that I was always given the best things my mom could give me. Since we lived in a lower-class household, we qualified for free lunches, which lifted the burden off of my mom from having to pay for one more thing for us. This is true, but my school did a horrible job of covering the fact that I got free lunch, so all my peers knew. This was humiliating for me because I tried my best to hide my family’s struggles from my classmates. My school, for reasons unbeknownst to me, decided to put all of the kids that got free or reduced lunches at the back of the line. I am unsure if they somehow needed to do this to make it more organized, or because they were somehow punishing us for being poor by making us get our lunch last, but either way, it was a humiliation I dealt with every single day for years. I know that if my school did something as ridiculous as this, that other schools (not all but some) are doing the same thing. I never want any child to have to experience that kind of purposeful embarrassment, and that is why free lunches would eliminate this problem altogether.

It is our job to be a voice for the voiceless and to be a friend to the friendless. Some of these children feel like they have nobody on their side, but if we come together to advocate for Free Universal School Lunch, they will finally have someone be their voice. The burden of scrambling to pull money together to pay for these school lunches is unnecessary and only adds stress to families that are already beyond stressed. Please join me in petitioning to create a bill that allows every child in Springfield to receive free lunches. It is the least we can do. Thank you so much for your time and consideration.