Chanel, your story is fabricated. It is not the truth.
- The 'agent' was not from the state or the feds. The 'agent' was a researcher from FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina.
- The researcher did not inspect ANY homemade lunches. The researcher ordered full school lunches for every single child in this program and was evaluating the schools compliance with standards, not individual parents compliance.
- And when you look into Sara Burrows, the reporter of the story, The Carolina Journal 'sounds' like some little hometown community newspaper. It's not.
Carolina Journal is the John Locke Foundations flagship media program.
John Locke Staff, Fellows, & Scholars | John Locke Foundation
WHO is the John Locke Foundation?
The John Locke Foundation (JLF) is a right-wing, free-market think tank in North Carolina.
So what you are outraged about is propaganda you are being fed. It is not truth, it is a LIE.
The
FACTS:
For starters, the context in which all of this occurred was a public school pre-K program run by the state popularly known as More at Four, but now called the generic name NC Pre-K. In order to have a child enrolled in this program, which has a limited number of slots, the parents must actively choose to enroll, with priority going to at-risk children, to wit: special needs children and (importantly) low-income children. Indeed, to even be eligible for the program, the child must either fit in one of those two categories or have a parent on (or about to be called on) active military duty. Enrollment as an at-risk child means that the childs enrollment is fully subsidized by the state, regardless of whether the day care is private or public.
These facts are critical because the state agent in this story turns out to be nothing more than a researcher from a program that grades the performance of pre-schools and operates out of the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It also does not appear that this institute has any actual authority other than to provide assessments, which the state then uses in making licensing decisions and in setting the fees it will pay the day care provider for subsidized care.
Notably, as the second-linked story above suggests, the mothers main gripe here does not even appear to be with this state agent, but instead with the schools teachers, who continue to give the girl milk and vegetables despite letters from the mother asking them not to.
Indeed, the notion that this state agent was going around inspecting every single lunch box brought to the school does not appear to have much basis, as the agent apparently ordered full school lunches for every single child in this program and was evaluating the schools compliance with standards, not individual parents compliance. Even if he was doing such an inspection, theres a pretty obvious context-specific reason for it: this is an opt-in program for parents who largely cant afford to provide fully balanced meals.
Her other major gripe appears to be that she is worried about being charged for the additional food being placed in front of her daughter based on a letter from the school purportedly saying that kids who did not bring a healthy lunch would be offered supplements and that parents may be charged for the supplemented portions.
However, as the second-linked story makes clear, no such charges have been issued nor apparently was there any actual chance that such charges would be issued.
The original storys claim that the relevant regulation applies to all pre-schools is also false to the contrary,
it applies only to pre-schools choosing to participate in (and eligible for) the subsidized program.
The original story further obscures that in no circumstance was this child or any child, for that matter being forced to eat the school-provided lunch, nor was this child -or any other child deprived of her boxed lunch. Instead, as the second linked story acknowledges,
the child was just provided with additional food and given the option to consume that in addition to her boxed lunch. In other words, the claim that the school replaced this girls turkey sandwich, banana, apple, potato chips, and juice with chicken nuggets is totally bogus.
