Some schools cut lunch options for kids who struggle to pay, By Alex Johnson, February 21, 2011, MSNBC.com: “At the turn of the new year, the Lee County, Fla., public schools were losing about $2,000 a week on school lunches. Then came the cheese sandwiches. When classes resumed Jan. 3 after the winter break, the district – the 40th-largest in the United States, with about 80,000 pupils – had a problem. Up to 1,100 pupils weren’t paying for their meals, school officials say. Because the National School Lunch Program, or NSLP, requires participating schools to provide nourishing meals for all pupils, what do school administrators do if a pupil shows up in the lunchroom with no cash and with no money left in his or her electronic meal account? Most raise their prices for kids who can pay, according to research by the nonprofit School Nutrition Association, which found that nearly 60 percent of public school districts raised lunch prices in 2009, the last full year for which national figures were available…”
Month: February 2011
Population Decrease in US Counties
In quarter of U.S. counties, deaths outnumbering births, By Hope Yen and John Raby (AP), February 23, 2011, Las Vegas Review-Journal: “In America’s once-thriving coal country, 87-year-old Ed Shepard laments a prosperous era gone by, when shoppers lined the streets and government lent a helping hand. Now, here as in one-fourth of all U.S. counties, West Virginia’s graying residents are slowly dying off. Hit by an aging population and a poor economy, a near-record number of U.S. counties are experiencing more deaths than births in their communities, a phenomenon demographers call ‘natural decrease.’ Years in the making, the problem is spreading amid a job slump and a push by Republicans in Congress to downsize government and federal spending…”
Health Insurance Coverage for Low-Income Adults – Pennsylvania
In Pa., low-income adults soon may be uninsured, By Jenny Gold, February 23, 2011, National Public Radio: “When Paula Michele Boyle first received the letter earlier this month explaining that her health insurance coverage was being terminated, she took it personally, thinking maybe the insurer had discovered something in her history to make her ineligible. But then the Philadelphia resident read on and realized that it wasn’t just her – the entire program, Pennsylvania’s state-funded health plan for low-income adults, was about to be canceled. For Boyle and her husband, Tom, both self-employed cancer survivors who need regular medical care, the news has been unnerving. ‘We were in shock over this,’ Boyle says. ‘What are we going to do now? We need doctor visits and testing.’ Nearly 42,000 people who participate in the program have received similar notices. Another 494,787 people had been on the waiting list, hoping to get such coverage…”