Education Week 5-11-2011 Reflection

School Lunch Applications:  Continuing on with a trend of reflections on food comes this tasty tidbit from the US Department of Agriculture - only half of the applications, of which 279,000 was a mere sampling of the applications, were found to be accurate.  As a result of this, twenty percent were getting free meals when they should have only been getting reduced price meals.  On top of this, one third of the students will lose their free or reduced meal pricing because parents would not provide documentation of how much money they make.  This completely flabbergasts me.  How is it that these families were even on the program in the first place?  Did they provide documentation to start with?  I'm assuming they did.  If they didn't then we have a whole other issue with how this aspect of our school system is run because that is ridiculous!  After that, one has to ask how often these families are supposed to provide documentation to keep getting the benefit of free or reduced lunch.  Hopefully it has only been one year.  Any long than a year and I would begin by saying that is a gross neglection of responsibility.  Go ahead and fire all of those people.  They have been letting people (extreme emphasis) steal from the government!  Those people become responsible for what I am assuming to be millions of dollars "wasted" on families that do not deserve to have free or reduced lunch.  What it's really doing is stealing from the other needy families who deserve those free or reduced meals more.
Former GM Exec Named Detroit Emergency Manager:  See, this a move that I absolutely do not understand at all.  GM was once one of the great American motor companies before it started to fall behind and eventually had to take a wealth of money from the public in a federal bailout.  Tell me again, why on Earth are we handing the reigns of Detroit's Emergency Finanacial Management over to one of the executives that ran that company into the ground.  Perhaps the Governor of Michigan doesn't realize that this guy is one of many who are the reason I and I'm sure many other Americans probably wont ever think to buy an American brand car.  Yeah this guy probably didn't make all of the decisions that ruined General Motors, but being a high executive comes with it's fair share of responsibilities, which he clearly did not fulfill very well.  It's a good thing that GM cleaned house and decided to get back on the right track, but this seems like a really poor decision on the Governor's part.  It feels very much like a nod, nod - wink, wink kind of deal or doing a favor for a friend where you really aren't comfortable or confident in how he is going to perform.  Would the governor do such a thing?  Get back to me in ten years or so with how Detroit school districts have done.