<\/p>\n Community pushes Bethlehem School District to offer free lunch for all students<\/a><\/p>\n
Monday night’s school board meeting in Bethlehem saw more than a dozen pleas for free lunch for all of the district’s students.<\/p>\n
“We tell them that attendance is important to success, but we do not fuel that attendance with food without incurring debt,” says another advocate.<\/p>\n
The Lehigh Valley Democratic Socialists of America (LVDSA) wants to expand free lunch through the federal community eligibility provision program (CEP).<\/p>\n
Several local clergy members are joining them in their efforts.<\/p>\n
“I think it’d be an investment for our schools and for our children, I think it’s important,” says Jon Stratton, dean, Cathedral Church of The Nativity.<\/p>\n
The district offers several low-cost or free programs for families, and says it maintains its commitment to ensuring that every student has access to meals each day.<\/p>\n
A statement released by the district says in part, “Providing meals for all students is a goal we support, however, under current funding structures, programs like CEP do not cover the full cost for a district like BASD.”<\/p>\n
The school’s superintendent says the program would result in shortfalls, totaling to around $500,000.<\/p>\n
It’s a burden that could be picked up by taxpayers.<\/p>\n
Advocates say the cost of what’s at stake is priceless.<\/p>\n
“It’s worth the $10 per household in property taxes to feed the children of our entire school district,” says Rev. Steve Davis, senior pastor, St. John’s United Church of Christ.<\/p>\n
The school board did not vote on the proposal Monday night. Any movement on the issue wouldn’t happen until the preliminary budget approval in May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Free lunch for all students. That’s what many community members called for at Monday night’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,1391,9179,233],"class_list":["post-146572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-area","tag-school_boards","tag-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}