'We desperately need the current administration and Congress to make sure that every student ... is being fed before being put in front of computer screens for hours at a time and asked to concentrate on learning,' writes Ron Avi Astor for CNNOpinion
Ron Avi Astor holds the Marjorie Crump Chair Professorship in Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs with a joint appointment in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. He is the author, most recently of Bullying, school violence, and climate in evolving contexts: Culture, organization and time. He co-authored a recent policy brief on basic needs of students in schools during the Covid-19 era.
Much of the talk on school reopenings has focused on technology, how to balance parent work and childcare with online schooling, best techniques to engage students online and social-emotional learning strategies. However, amid a pervasive pandemic, students' more basic needs -- like housing, mental health, the connectivity gap and food -- are not the top priority at the national level. They should be.
But here I'd like to focus on the most basic need: FoodRon AstorThe federal National School Lunch Program was launched and signed into law in 1947 by President Harry Truman because our country understood that it is not possible to learn, develop or thrive in school if a student is sitting in class hungry. About 30 million students a year receive free or reduced price meals each school day through this program. In 2018 close to five billion lunches were served to students nationwide.
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