Death Cab for Cutie’s surprise concert in Seattle last month raised $7,185.06 for Seattle Public School’s lunch program which will provide a nutritious lunch to hundreds of students who otherwise couldn’t have afforded it.
At $3 per student, that’s 2,395 students, says SPS Director of Nutrition Services Eric Boutin.
Proceeds from the concert will go into effect in the 2011-2012 school year, when kitchen managers at all 20 SPS secondary school will help students access the funds based on need.
This is the second time the Bellingham band has donated money to support the Seattle school district’s school lunch program. In January 2009, the band contributed $2,200 in ticket sales from shows played the previous year to help students get access to school lunches they couldn’t have afforded.
Currently, more than 44 percent of Seattle public school students are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch. “Many more families are right on the border of being eligible,” says Boutin, lauding Death Cab for Cutie for their efforts. Most of the funding for free and reduced lunch comes from federal funds. A small amount is from the state, which will reduce its funding next year. Boutin is still trying to figure out what that will mean for the program.
“We continue to try to expand our ‘local farmer connections’ and do good things for kids with the menu—but any cutback in funding—even the few pennies we get from the state is not helpful,” Boutin says.
Remember Boutin’s announcement last fall about how Tom Douglas’s chefs will team up with Seattle schools to create made-from-scratch meals in its cafeterias for the first time?
Well, that’s already happening. The chefs have been working with the SPS central kitchen team to develop recipes. Boutin says the new recipes will be introduced this fall through “family nights” at six schools where they will be marketed and taste-tested with students and their families. “We hope to have them on the menu starting in the fall,” he says. Boutin’s team is also working to tie the launch with Food Day on Oct. 24, which will celebrate the connection between food, farmers, and good health.
It is so sad that the school lunch program needs someone to raise funds for it. Why can’t we just pay for it with taxes like a normal country?
Thank god the rich won’t have to pay that $7K!! I mean the wealthy in our city, state and nation are the most oppressed people in the history of the planet.
@1 I’m gonna go with decades of slowly starving our public schools of funds and letting media conglomerates gobble up nearly everything, allowing them to control what our dumb-downed citizenry hears, which caused the ranks of voters who vote against their own interests to grow by leaps and bounds.
@3 All good points. Also, we have to realize governments (anywhere, fed, state, county, you name it) have decided they’re going to fully fund exactly jack and shit from now until eternity (unless it’s a big tax break to corporations in the name of creating jobs that materialize in China and India), it’s just a fact public entities will have to lean more and more on the private sector to stay functional.
I 3rd these & up it w/ a WTF? 44% – this is just sick as I’m a working single dad & pay my sons lunch bill every month. So, who the hell are we paying for then…?
From the Save Seattle Schools blog:
Unfortunately, Mr. Boutin apparently thought so much of the donated money that he celebrated by giving big raises totalling more than $ 7,900 (per year) to just 3 supervisors (beginning June 1st)in that department that has been shrinking by the day as more kids turn their noses up to the airline food that has led to the staggering loss of $ 600,000 for next year.
This from a department that was “in the black” this year and that we have heard has “too high labor costs” to give the workers raises.
Many people spend their health gaining wealth, but then have to spend their wealth to regain health. In a joint effort with the First Lady Michelle Obama, the USDA has been making an effort to enhance the health of school lunches. The restrictions on school lunches would have incorporated an important limit on the amount of spuds that might be served. However, the program has been obstructed by the U.S. Senate. Source of article: Potatoes will stay in schools, for now