When faced with cost increases, it seems everyone these days is passing along the cost to the consumer. Today I received a letter in the mail from the Edmonds School District reminding me how important lunch is for my growing child's development, but sadly, they have to increase his school lunch daily fee to a whopping $4/day.Like most retail outlets are in the midst of discovering, passing the cost ultimately means "no sale." My recommendation to the Edmonds School District is to review their budget again for ways to save money on their own, instead of trying to pass along a stealth tax to parents already stretched to the limit.
Brian Moran
Lynnwood
Excuse me, Mr. Moran, but your decision to have children is passing along a cost to me. Like 70% of residents in the Edmonds School District, I don't have any children attending public schools, but I pay plenty of property tax to support your children. If you, and people like you, decided to have fewer children, we would all reap a significant tax break.
As for the "whopping $4/day", I would hope you place greater value in the health of your children. Unfortunately, in many cases, school lunch is the healthiest meal they will eat each day. Four bucks is a latte at Starbucks and so many parents think nothing of guzzling one each morning while their children go to school to forage for food.
If $4/day is just too much to pay, try packing a lunch every morning. I'd be willing to bet that the value of your time and the cost of the food cannot stay under four dollars.
You can also choose to do nothing because there's always a free cheese sandwich.
Mark Zandberg
Edmonds
Blog: The letter from Brian Moran can be read in the Enterprise. It's a great newspaper that appreciates constructive engagement with the community and warmly embraces the very infrequent use of pertinent articles when a link to their website is included.
9 comments:
I received a very interesting call to the tip line. The caller believes that the school district portion of our property tax bill should be adjusted along with enrollment.
If the District continues to drive students away, what happens to their community subsidy as enrollment approaches zero?
The money from the State would diminish but our community would still be contributing.
Under such a scenario, management could eventually fire every teacher and administrator and afford to enrich themselves even further.
Hey, what are these purple things in my Lucky Charms?
According to the Lucky Charms website, they are horseshoes.
If I was on the school board I would want to know exactly how Food Services arrived at the $4 figure.
I would also want an accounting each month on how much debt is being accumulated by students and how much this free cheese thing is costing.
I just learned today that if a students owes more than $10 at breakfast they are given one muffin.
AND
If they owe more than $10 at lunch, they are given a cheese sandwich.
I didn't realize the debt could be $20 per student!
All the bigger kids really should get two cheese sandwiches. That's only fair.
Hey to the "look what I learned today".... My learn today trumps your learn today . Sorry but you need to get in the game. There is a CVE student that is neither a free OR reduced student. Are you over the shock yet so I may continue? HE has a running $347.00 tab from way back that carries over. So this IOU expert got free cheese sandwiches for the first two days of school. Are you kidding me? This might just be the worst FN lesson that can be taught in our system. Nick are your kids free and reduced? Just curious. What happens at Madrona anyway?
The policy is the students only get to carry a debt of $10.00 including breakfast and lunch not $20.00. I heard the debt was at $225,000 thanks to Dr. NB but I don't know how much has been paid back.
Now Mark, we all know you are smart enough to understand that subsidizing an appropriate education is beneficial for all society. The more productive the future workforce, the more they will be compensated and contribute to the general good through income and sales taxes, among other tax and fees.
Be glad someone else had a kid to contribute to your social security and medicare. (Not to mention, it is really nice to have a future workforce to continuiously provide the goods and services we'll all need in the future.)
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