Activism
Free School Meals for All Here to Stay in California
With 1 in every 6 children facing hunger in the U.S., California is the first state to promise that every public school student — all 6 million of them – will get free school meals.
With 1 in every 6 children facing hunger in the U.S., California is the first state to promise that every public school student — all 6 million of them – will get free school meals.
The universal school meals program, which will launch in the 2022-2023 school year, is part of the landmark state budget agreement reached between Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature last month. Days later, Maine became the second state to commit to offering a universal school meals program with the signing of its budget.
The program ensures that all students will be offered breakfast and lunch at their school, which state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, said is “essential to learning.” Skinner has led the effort to establish a universal school meal program.
“We know that many California children are food insecure, and if you’re hungry you cannot learn well,” Skinner said. “The whole point of school is learning, and everything we can do to create an environment that allows children to thrive and learn is what we need to do.”
Skinner introduced a bill in March that would have established a universal school meal program. After the program garnered bipartisan support and the California Department of Finance forecast unexpectedly large projected revenues, lawmakers opted to include it in the state budget rather than as a separate bill.
The final agreement between Newsom and the Legislature calls for $650 million through the Proposition 98 fund each year to reimburse school districts starting in 2022, as well as $54 million in the 2021-22 fiscal year to supplement state meal reimbursements. Proposition 98 is the formula that determines what portion of the general fund goes to community colleges and K-12 schools.
The state program is set to begin in the 2022-23 school year because the U.S. Department of Agriculture has already committed to paying for school meals for all students through the 2021-22 school year.
The USDA has reimbursed districts for providing free meals to all students since the start of the pandemic. Before the pandemic, districts were only reimbursed for feeding students who were enrolled in the National School Lunch Program. Advocates said being able to feed students without having to check whether they qualified for free lunches allowed districts to serve more families at a time when many faced hunger and hardship.
Waiving the eligibility requirements allowed the Oakland Unified School District, for example, to distribute as many as 18,000 grab-and-go meals a day during the pandemic, said spokesman John Sasaki.
“That just goes to show the need that was there,” Sasaki said.
Previously, as part of the National School Lunch Program application process, families had to disclose their household income, how many people lived in the household, their children’s immigration status or if their children were homeless or runaways. Some families feared giving out that information, and students may have felt embarrassed to receive a free meal while others paid for it.
Schools in New York City began serving free meals to all students in 2017 after finding that some students would rather go hungry than admit they didn’t have enough money to pay for lunch. The decision followed a national outcry over “lunch shaming” — publicly shaming students for unpaid school meal bills, or even school staff throwing away their lunches rather than allowing them to eat.
Advocates believed that though 3.9 million students – 63% of California’s student body — participated in the program, the need was actually much higher.
“It’s such good news that everybody gets food with no strings attached, but to be able to do it in a way that nobody is called out is the best thing about this,” Sasaki said. “We want to make sure kids are never given a hard time for being who they are or being in the situation they are in.”
Districts will still be asking families to fill out household income eligibility forms, however. That’s because the number of families in the district that make so little that they qualify for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program remains a key factor in the state’s Local Control Funding Formula. The formula gives additional state funds to districts based on the number of low-income students, English learners, foster children and homeless youth they serve.
Tony Wold, the West Contra Costa Unified associate superintendent of business services, said the district was concerned that fewer families would fill out the household income eligibility forms because they didn’t have to in order to receive free meals. That could have potentially led to a reduction in supplemental funds for the cash-strapped district. To help solve the problem, the district had outreach workers call families directly, explaining why it was important for families to submit the information.
The outreach workers’ “big lift” resulted in more families filling out the forms than the previous year, Wold said, which kept the district’s unduplicated pupils percentage constant. That statistic measures the share of a district’s students who are low-income, homeless, foster youth or English learners — all of which drive the Local Control Funding Formula.
Outreach workers at Oakland Unified emphasize to families who are skeptical about the forms that they determine how much money goes to the classroom, Sasaki said.
California School Boards Association spokesman Troy Flint said the organization anticipates it will be harder for districts to collect income eligibility forms with the new universal meals program. The association hopes the state will provide some support to schools’ “diligent and creative efforts” to collect the forms, though the group isn’t calling for any specific change.
“This administration has prioritized steering additional money toward high-need students, particularly into concentration grants, so there’s reason to believe they might be willing to work toward a modification here,” Flint said.
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of November 20 – 26, 2024
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of November 20 – 26, 2024
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Activism
An Inside Look into How San Francisco Analyzes Homeless Encampments
Dozens of unhoused people are camped at Sixth and Jesse streets in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood. Tents made of tarps and blankets, piles of debris, and people lounging alongside the allies and walls of businesses are seen from all angles. These are some of the city’s hotspots. City crews have cleared encampments there over 30 times in the past year, but unhoused people always return.
By Magaly Muñoz
Dozens of unhoused people are camped at Sixth and Jesse streets in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood. Tents made of tarps and blankets, piles of debris, and people lounging alongside the allies and walls of businesses are seen from all angles.
These are some of the city’s hotspots. City crews have cleared encampments there over 30 times in the past year, but unhoused people always return.
But it’s normal to have tents set up again within less than 24 hours after an encampment sweep, David Nakanishi, Healthy Streets Operation Center Manager at the Department of Emergency Management, says. Sometimes there’s less people than before but often there is also no change.
“Most of the people that were in the encampments that want to go inside, we’ve gotten the majority of those [into shelter],” Nakanishi says. “Many of the people we encounter now, are those who have various reasons to not accept shelter, and some are already in shelter/housing”.
Since the ruling of Grants Pass by the US Supreme Court earlier this summer, which allows cities the authority to ban people from camping or sleeping on the streets, San Francisco has been at the head of the conversation to crack down on encampments.
Where neighboring cities in the Bay Area are clearing encampments a few days a week, San Francisco is sweeping 10 times a week, two per weekday.
Considering the controversy that plagues the city around its harsh policies, the Post decided to tag along on a ride with Nakanishi to show us how he decides what encampments make it on the city’s sweep list.
Nakanishi, having over 20 years of experience in homelessness management, drives around the busiest parts of the city almost daily. He’s tasked with arranging a weekly sweeping operation schedule for city teams to engage with unhoused folks to help get them off the streets.
So what exactly is he looking out for when deciding what encampments get swept?
It depends, he says.
Locations like schools, recreational centers, senior centers, or businesses are places he tends to want to address quickly, especially schools. These are the places where the complaints are highest and access to facilities is important for residents.
He says he also takes into account 311 calls and reports made to him by city staff. On the date of publication, over 100 calls and reports were made about encampments around the city, according to San Francisco data.
Nakanishi made a few 311 reports himself on the ride along, pulling over to take photos and describe the encampments into his 311 app. He says it helps him remember where to possibly sweep next or allows smaller teams in the city to engage quicker with individuals on the streets.
Nakanishi also looks at the state of the encampments. Are there a lot of bulky items, such as furniture, or makeshift structures built out of tarps and plywood, blocking areas of traffic? Is trash beginning to pile up and spill into the streets or sidewalks? Sites that meet this criteria tend to be contenders for encampment sweeps, Nakanishi says.
Street by street, he points out individuals he’s interacted with, describing their conditions, habits, and reasons for denying assistance from the city.
One man on 2nd St and Mission, who rolls around a blue recycling bin and often yells at passing pedestrians, has refused shelter several times, Nakanishi says.
People deny shelter for all kinds of reasons, he says. There’s too many rules to follow, people feel unsafe in congregate or shared shelters, or their behavioral and mental health problems make it hard to get them into proper services.
Nakanishi references another man on South Van Ness under the freeway, who city outreach have attempted to get into shelter, but his screaming outbursts make it difficult to place him without disturbing other people in the same space. Nakanishi says it might be an issue of the man needing resources like medication to alleviate his distress that causes the screaming, but the city behavioral team is in the process of outreaching him to figure that out.
In October, city outreach teams engaged with 495 unhoused people. 377 of those engaged refused shelter and only 118 accepted placements, according to city data. That number of monthly referrals is consistent throughout the entirety of 2024 so far.
Nakanishi has long advocated for the well-being of unhoused people, he explains. In 2004, he was working with the Department of Public Health and told then-Mayor Gavin Newsom that there needed to be more housing for families. Nakinishi was told it was easier to deal with individuals first and the city “will get there eventually.” 20 years later, family housing is still not as extensive as it could be, and the waiting list to get placements for families is a mile long with over 500 names.
In 2020, he was a Senior Behavioral Health Clinician at a hotel in the city during the pandemic. He says in 2021 he collaborated with DPH to provide vaccines to those staying in the makeshift hotel shelters once those became available.
Despite the constant media attention that city outreach is inhumanely treating homeless people, so much so that it has led to lawsuits against San Francisco from advocates, Nakanishi says not a lot of people are seeing the true conditions of some encampments.
He describes soiled clothing and tents, drenched in urine, and oftentimes rodents or bug infestations in places where people are sleeping. He’s asked homeless advocates- often those who are the most critical about the city’s work- who have shown up to observe the sweeps if those are conditions the city should allow people to be subjected to, but not many have answers for him, Nakanishi says.
The city’s “bag and tag” policy allows city workers to throw away items that are “soiled by infectious materials” such as bodily fluids and waste.
Sweep operations are conducted at 8am and 1pm Monday through Friday. People at the encampments are given 72 hour notice to vacate, but some don’t leave the area until the day of the sweep.
City outreach workers come out the day before and day of to offer resources and shelter to those interested. The Department of Public Works discards any trash that is left over from the sweep and washes down the area.
Nakanishi told the Post that the only time the city takes tents or personal possessions from residents is when folks become physically violent towards workers and police take the items as evidence. Other items taken are bagged and tagged in accordance with city policy.
Stories from local newspapers such as the San Francisco Standard and the Chronicle show instances of SFPD handcuffing residents while their items are thrown in the trash or disposing of personal possessions without reason.
Advocates have long been pushing for a more competent and compassionate process if the city is going to choose to continue sweeping unhouse people.
No matter the lawsuits and constant criticisms from allies, the encampment sweeps are not slowing down, even with the cold weather quickly approaching the coastal city.
Nakanishi says there aren’t a lot of large encampments left in San Francisco so now they do runs of streets in order to stretch out the sweeps as much as possible.
It’s calculated strategies and years of first hand knowledge that make this job work, “It takes dedication to the work, caring for the people and the community, and persistence, patience and sometimes good luck to make the positive changes for the people on the street,” Nakanishi says.
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of November 13 – 19, 2024
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of November 13 – 19, 2024
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