From the Inquirer today.
...So rarely is the summer feeding gap discussed that Ruth Damsker, a former Montgomery County commissioner, said she was shocked to hear about it from a reporter. "I'm appalled, frankly. Maybe it happens because kids don't vote. That's sad."
...Someone should consider rearranging budgets to feed these children, said Joe Quattrocchi, executive director of the Pennsylvania Hunger Action Center. "It does beg common sense that if you have students availing themselves of free lunch during the school year, what happens when it's out?"
Check out Philabundance.org. And don't forget there's free lunch students in Morrisville too. Not sure where to start? There's always the Morrisville Presbyterian Church food bank.
Summer brings hunger in suburbs
There are fewer options to replace free school lunches.
By Alfred Lubrano, Inquirer Staff Writer
Hunger lined up, quiet and orderly, in the summer heat of a Delaware County day.
Suburban women, many looking a decade older than their ages, awaited their turn to collect strawberries, bananas and bread being distributed by Philabundance, the hunger-relief agency, at a Delaware County Housing Authority building in Woodlyn.
Several of them, including Marisa Koerbel of Lower Merion, were there to plug the summer feeding gap - to find food for their children, who usually get free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches in schools now closed for summer.
Hunger isn't just an empty plate on a Philly table.
It touches the suburbs, too. And the number of poor and working-poor families scrambling to find food outside Philadelphia is growing.
Although various suburban programs offer meals for youngsters in July and August, there are far fewer options than in Philadelphia, which has many more feeding sites.
"Look at him, he's underweight," Koerbel, 37, said, tilting her head toward her son, Tyler Sylvester, who completed fourth grade at Merion Elementary School. "There are days I can't feed him everything he needs. I feel embarrassed being on welfare in the high-dollar area where I live."
Tyler, 10, who gets free lunch at school, said he understands what's happening and feels bad. "She doesn't have much money," he said of his mother. "My best friend's dad works at Villanova. He makes lots of money and he has lots of food."
Koerbel said she gets no child support and is home to care for her two other children, ages 2 and 4. Shaking her head, she said, "It's hard being hungry on the Main Line."
Suburban need is growing. In the 2006-07 school year, 54,905 children in Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties relied on free or reduced-price school lunches - a 24 percent increase in four years.
Chester County experienced the biggest jump - 42 percent. More than 10,000 children countywide got subsidized meals in the 2006-07 school year, according to data from the Pennsylvania Department of Education compiled by the Pennsylvania Hunger Action Center in Harrisburg.
An Inquirer survey of summer programs in the Pennsylvania suburbs found they fed only 15 percent of eligible low-income children.
That left some 47,000 youngsters in the suburbs who normally eat subsidized meals without that food in July and August.
"These kids are orphaned for the summer," said Patrick Druhan, food-resources director for the Montgomery County Community Action Development Commission. "Aside from pockets of poverty like Norristown, many hungry suburban kids are scattered.
"It's one of these cracks in the system, where everything is fine till school lets out. And nobody's taken up the task."
To qualify for a free school lunch, a family of four can make up to $27,400 a year - 130 percent of the federal poverty level.
For reduced-price meals, a family of four can't exceed $39,200 - 185 percent of poverty. A reduced-price meal costs parents 40 cents or less.
Knowing there are hungry children unseen in the suburbs "makes me crazy," said Anne Ayella, assistant director at Nutritional Development Services, part of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
Ayella's group runs 550 summer feeding programs in the five-county area. "People don't realize there are poor people in the suburbs."
Feeding gaps also exist in South Jersey, where nearly 70,000 students are eligible for free and reduced summer feeding programs but few exist, advocates say.
In Philadelphia, where census figures show that one-third of children aged 5 to 17 live in poverty, there is greater awareness of the need to provide summer meals.
Around 53 percent of students who get subsidized meals in school are in a summer feeding program, more than three times the suburban rate.
So rarely is the summer feeding gap discussed that Ruth Damsker, a former Montgomery County commissioner, said she was shocked to hear about it from a reporter.
"I'm appalled, frankly. Maybe it happens because kids don't vote. That's sad."
County government is not responsible for children's meals; it's a school district problem, county-level officials say. Meanwhile, district officials throughout the area say they don't have the budget to offer summer food.
"Our buildings are not open, and we don't have summer feeding programs," said Susan Phy, a spokeswoman for the Bensalem Township School District, where the number of poor children increased 68 percent between 2000 and 2005, according to a census analysis by Mark Price, labor economist at the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg.
In one district school, Rush Elementary, 56 percent of fifth graders are eligible for subsidized lunches, according to state figures.
"As far as I know, there has never been any discussion" of instituting summer feeding, Phy said.
Someone should consider rearranging budgets to feed these children, said Joe Quattrocchi, executive director of the Pennsylvania Hunger Action Center.
"It does beg common sense that if you have students availing themselves of free lunch during the school year, what happens when it's out?"
It's a problem clear to everyone who was waiting in the Woodlyn Philabundance line. Koerbel, of Lower Merion, knows it. So does Jean Shaw of Linwood, Delaware County.
Her son, Thomas Leo, 14, gets free lunch at Chichester Middle School. But school's out.
"I'm here trying to make do," said Shaw, 45, an unmarried woman who said she is out of work because she was attacked by a dog she was working with at a dog day-care. She normally makes $12,000 a year.
Now, she said, "lunches and breakfasts that he got for free cost me. He tells me he's hungry. It hurts."
Recently, one of her son's friends came over and opened the refrigerator. "You don't have a thing to eat in here," Shaw remembered the boy saying.
Overhearing this, Rose Ann Robertson, the grandmother of a 6-year-old girl in Eddystone, Delaware County, commiserated. Thank goodness, Robertson said, for food pantries and distribution sites.
But pantries run low this season precisely because of the lunch feeding gap.
"My kids are hungry, so I hold back," Koerbel said. "A lot of parents in Lower Merion look at me differently. And kids can be cruel to my children with teasing because they don't have much.
"We try to make the best of it."
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
From the Mailbag
Another satisfied customer...
Dear STS--
Thanks for the job you're doing. Please consider printing this.
I am so tired of hearing how Morrisville test scores "stink" and the students and teachers are all under-performing slackers. Here was another uninformed and ignorant comment today about how the schools system is completely responsible for the decline of Morrisville's home values.
"Borows, you're right again. But how do we increase property values and improve our borough at the same time? It's easy, have an excellent school district with outstanding test scores. Then everything would fall into place. Better businesses and families would flock here. The trouble is no matter how much money is pumped into that school district the test scores stink and people don't want to live here because of that. So instead of the bloggers being worried about money (lord knows we've had plenty, 20k per student) why don't you consider ways to improve academics in the schools?"
I won't speculate on who anonymous is. I'll tell you right now that I am proud of the education my two children have received in this district, from kindergarten to the present. I have one child who completed 11th grade and one who completed 9th.
I can only speak to what I know. I know I have worked hard as a parent to ensure how my children learn and what they learn. I know that the Morrisville teachers have been uniformly one of the most dedicated and experienced groups of people I have had the pleasure to work with. I have had dealings with the present administration and find them to also be extremely dedicated and responsive. I'm still waiting for the current board of education to get back to me on items from January.
I had a good education in a middle sized district in central New Jersey. My SAT and NJ evaluation test scores were pretty darned good back in 1978 and 79. My son's SAT and PSSA scores are just as good and better in many areas. My daughter's PSSA scores are also excellent, and I'm expecting her to exceed my SAT scores.
I'll sit down with you, Anonymous, and we can take the placement tests together.
The test scores across the country are lower. That makes it an American problem, not only a Morrisville problem. Assuming that every teacher is at fault for this is ludicrous. Assuming that throwing money at the problem is the answer is also ludicrous. What is needed here is a solid and sober look at how to make things better, not tearing them apart for the sake of tearing them apart.
The problem here is leadership. The school board has abandoned any sense of leadership by slashing and burning their way through the oversight of the schools. The aim is to have a takeover of the school system by anyone else, no matter how it is achieved. Ignorance is not bliss and solving problems by ignoring them or handing them over to someone else is no solution. After reading those stories about the Arkansas district's problems, why would we want to try the same thing?
A leadership problem also exists on the boro council. A great example of the lack of leadership is Gateway. Instead of letting the process do the job, they simply abdicated responsibility and wanted problems to go away. The boro council is responsible for the condition of Morrisville's tax base. Instead of slash and burn, here it's just inaction and indifference. Thinking that with a better school system, everything will "fall into place" sounds just like the prevailing ostrich style thinking of the boro council.
Dear STS--
Thanks for the job you're doing. Please consider printing this.
I am so tired of hearing how Morrisville test scores "stink" and the students and teachers are all under-performing slackers. Here was another uninformed and ignorant comment today about how the schools system is completely responsible for the decline of Morrisville's home values.
"Borows, you're right again. But how do we increase property values and improve our borough at the same time? It's easy, have an excellent school district with outstanding test scores. Then everything would fall into place. Better businesses and families would flock here. The trouble is no matter how much money is pumped into that school district the test scores stink and people don't want to live here because of that. So instead of the bloggers being worried about money (lord knows we've had plenty, 20k per student) why don't you consider ways to improve academics in the schools?"
I won't speculate on who anonymous is. I'll tell you right now that I am proud of the education my two children have received in this district, from kindergarten to the present. I have one child who completed 11th grade and one who completed 9th.
I can only speak to what I know. I know I have worked hard as a parent to ensure how my children learn and what they learn. I know that the Morrisville teachers have been uniformly one of the most dedicated and experienced groups of people I have had the pleasure to work with. I have had dealings with the present administration and find them to also be extremely dedicated and responsive. I'm still waiting for the current board of education to get back to me on items from January.
I had a good education in a middle sized district in central New Jersey. My SAT and NJ evaluation test scores were pretty darned good back in 1978 and 79. My son's SAT and PSSA scores are just as good and better in many areas. My daughter's PSSA scores are also excellent, and I'm expecting her to exceed my SAT scores.
I'll sit down with you, Anonymous, and we can take the placement tests together.
The test scores across the country are lower. That makes it an American problem, not only a Morrisville problem. Assuming that every teacher is at fault for this is ludicrous. Assuming that throwing money at the problem is the answer is also ludicrous. What is needed here is a solid and sober look at how to make things better, not tearing them apart for the sake of tearing them apart.
The problem here is leadership. The school board has abandoned any sense of leadership by slashing and burning their way through the oversight of the schools. The aim is to have a takeover of the school system by anyone else, no matter how it is achieved. Ignorance is not bliss and solving problems by ignoring them or handing them over to someone else is no solution. After reading those stories about the Arkansas district's problems, why would we want to try the same thing?
A leadership problem also exists on the boro council. A great example of the lack of leadership is Gateway. Instead of letting the process do the job, they simply abdicated responsibility and wanted problems to go away. The boro council is responsible for the condition of Morrisville's tax base. Instead of slash and burn, here it's just inaction and indifference. Thinking that with a better school system, everything will "fall into place" sounds just like the prevailing ostrich style thinking of the boro council.
Council Rock Renovations
In Council Rock, the untouched 40 year old school buildings will each need $10 to $12 million dollars for renovations. What will it cost here in Morrisville?
Crews remove asbestos tiles from schools
Next year, renovations at each school will begin to update the more than 40-year-old buildings.
By RACHEL CANELLI
Churchville and Holland elementary schools aren’t just closed for the summer — they’re sealed.
Work is under way at both buildings in Northampton to remove asbestos tile flooring in the classrooms to prepare for future renovations, according to Superintendent Mark Klein.
Together, the abatement projects, which cost less than $300,000, are the first part of a two- to three-year renovation process at each school, officials said.
Since serious illness can be caused by inhaling asbestos, which is a group of minerals with long, thin, fibrous crystals, both schools have been closed up, and their offices have been temporarily relocated to modular structures, administrators said.
Klein emphasized that neither school has asbestos problems and that the shutdowns are precautions.
“The tiles served each school well, but they need to be taken off by a professional contractor,” he said.
After this month’s construction, desks and chairs will be returned to the classrooms, where floors will be covered by area rugs, officials said.
The renovations are expected to begin next summer. Each of the two projects is estimated to cost between $10 million to $12 million, but those numbers could change depending on yet-to-be-determined design details and bids, administrators said.
At the very least, Churchville and Holland should receive new heating and air-conditioning systems, refurbished classrooms, updated libraries and new computers, officials said.
“Both schools need significant work because they haven’t been touched in the 40 years they’ve been in service,” Klein said. “This should add another 25 to 30 years to their life cycle.”
Crews remove asbestos tiles from schools
Next year, renovations at each school will begin to update the more than 40-year-old buildings.
By RACHEL CANELLI
Churchville and Holland elementary schools aren’t just closed for the summer — they’re sealed.
Work is under way at both buildings in Northampton to remove asbestos tile flooring in the classrooms to prepare for future renovations, according to Superintendent Mark Klein.
Together, the abatement projects, which cost less than $300,000, are the first part of a two- to three-year renovation process at each school, officials said.
Since serious illness can be caused by inhaling asbestos, which is a group of minerals with long, thin, fibrous crystals, both schools have been closed up, and their offices have been temporarily relocated to modular structures, administrators said.
Klein emphasized that neither school has asbestos problems and that the shutdowns are precautions.
“The tiles served each school well, but they need to be taken off by a professional contractor,” he said.
After this month’s construction, desks and chairs will be returned to the classrooms, where floors will be covered by area rugs, officials said.
The renovations are expected to begin next summer. Each of the two projects is estimated to cost between $10 million to $12 million, but those numbers could change depending on yet-to-be-determined design details and bids, administrators said.
At the very least, Churchville and Holland should receive new heating and air-conditioning systems, refurbished classrooms, updated libraries and new computers, officials said.
“Both schools need significant work because they haven’t been touched in the 40 years they’ve been in service,” Klein said. “This should add another 25 to 30 years to their life cycle.”
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