Cut School Lunch Money To Improve Reading: Arkansas Legislator

LITTLE ROCK, AR — A state legislator in Arkansas wants to send students to class without lunch if their schools don’t improve reading scores. Sen. Alan Clark, a Lonsdale Republican, admits the idea is controversial, but said “seeing that Arkansas children can read is worth a few bruises.”

Clark said 60 percent of graduates from Arkansas public schools “can’t do the most basic thing we send them to school for well: read.” His bill would require that school districts that don’t improve their reading proficiency by .0001 every two years would see a reduction in National School Lunch Program funding.

“In most businesses, I would be laughed at for suggesting such a small goal,” Clark said in a statement. “But sadly, many educators act like I have asked them to storm the beaches at Normandy. ... Basically, the standard is just don’t go backwards. It appears I have much more faith in our schools than many of our educators do.”

The lunch money targeted by the bill isn’t that provided under the National School Lunch Act, which President Harry Truman, signed but rather by a supplemental state program with similar name — the National School Lunch Program — that distributes money to school districts “based on the concentration of poverty in their student populations,” news station KTHV reported.

Even so, the National School Lunch Program is the second-largest food and nutrition program in U.S. schools, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which says it provides low-cost or free lunches to more than 30.4 million children daily.

The proposed bill, which must first clear the Senate Committee on Education, would disproportionately hit economically struggling families, Laura Kellams, of the Northwest Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, told news station KFSM.

“As proposed, it actually wouldn’t affect lunch money funding, but it would affect targeted funding that school districts have, particularly to meet the educational needs in poverty,” Kellams said. “And that’s things like pre-k programs to after-school programs.”

Rick Schaeffer, a spokesman for the Springdale school District, the largest in Arkansas, said the proposed legislation could have unintended consequences.

“Literacy is a prime importance, we are not downplaying that at all, but we also have a large number of English language learners that sometimes affect your total test scores,” Schaeffer told KFSM.

Critics of the proposed legislation point to National Education Association findings that children’s development and academic performance are impaired by missing meals and experiencing hunger. They are more likely than students who eat regularly to repeat a grade, come to school late or miss school entirely. Others say the proposal puts the state’s poorest, most at-risk kids at a disadvantage.

Glen Fenter, superintendent of the Marion School District in Arkansas’ Delta district, which has a high number of economically deprived students, told the Arkansas Times that it’s “Impossible to overstate the importance” of NSLP funding “in our efforts to break the cycle of poverty in our region.”

Fenter, a former community college president, put together a position paper on the subject.

Laquita Chalmers, a West Memphis parent of four children, including one who struggles with reading, told news station WREG that she doesn’t “see any connection” between cutting school lunch assistance and improving literacy.

“I don’t understand, and hopefully that bill won’t get passed in Arkansas,” Chalmers said.

“That’s not right. It’s just not fair,” Marilyn Canady, a grandmother of five, said of the proposal to withhold school lunch money at underperforming schools. “This is most definitely not the option.”

Blaming partisan politics for “fanning the flames,” Clark told KTHV and misconstruing the aim of his proposed bill. He said schools that are “stuck” at a certain level wouldn’t lose funding, but they would if overall reading proficiency decreased.

Schools use the NSLP money for a variety of things, and his proposal offers a carrot to improve reading scores.

“Keep in mind we have schools that have whole grades - not a class - a whole grade at zero percent reading proficiency,” Clark told KTHV. “I mean, why are we sending kids to school?”

In the statement, he said he’s not new to controversy.

“You don’t get anything important done without confrontation and taking a few knocks,” he said.