Chicago students are threatening a one-day walkout on December 17 to protest the terrible school lunches they receive.
The fruit is bruised and moldy; the pizza looks as it was cooked three days ago. The kids are poor, but they don’t deserve to be fed food that is damaged goods. For some of these children, lunch may be the only meal they get. Why not serve them nutritious food? Mayor Emanuel runs the schools. He should be held accountable.
The food is prepared by Aramark, a private company that also supplies food to prisons and has a contract to clean the Chicago schools. Ever since Aramark won the custodial contracts, leading to the layoffs of experienced custodians, principals have complained about dirty buildings.
A modest proposal: Why not invite the Chicago Board of Education–all of them–to eat lunch in a public school every day for a week? Do you think they would show up?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If Emanuel and his puppet school board stared eating the school lunches, it could not be scheduled or they would make sure on those days the food was good. They must agree to go eat that food any day of the week without warning. It has to be a surprise for them and unscheduled and then they must eat every bite while being monitored by the media.
Aramark gets no warning and the five days Emanuel and his puppets eat lunch with the students must be spread out over the school year.
Don’t give them any chances to game the system in their favor. To them, this is all a shell game.
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Yes!
😎
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With ample experience comes Lloyd’s wisdom in commenting!!
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Yes–let Chicago’s elites dine with the students whose fates they circumscribe. To paraphrase the late, great Joseph Welch, have you at long last, Mr. Emanuel, no sense of decency?
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Instagram and a catchy hash tag are probably all it would take to get the word out there.
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Guess this is an effort to prepare students for their future incarceration, courtesy of the school-to-prison pipeline…
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Priscilla Gutierrez:
What you said.
😎
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At one point my brother worked for Aramark. They have level of service contracts. Chicago must be paying for the bottom level contract, or maybe someone is getting a kickback. Someone should investigate.
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Yes – their food can be quite good. Years ago I worked with people with disabilities for a couple years helping them at their jobs and one of our job sites was an Aramark employee cafeteria at a local factory (now closed, of course). The food was amazing – just like what you find at museums and such like places that have “stations” – deli, grill, salad bar, main course, etc. It was one of my favorite sites to cover. Sad that our children only deserve bottom of the barrel “food”.
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To answer your question: NO!
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If the board or members of the community had to eat these lunches, I’ll guarantee you, the quality would change dramatically.
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Students and the board should watch Battleship Potemkin together.
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This is the fruit of neoliberal philosophy. Privatization is a key principle of the Hayek and Friedman economic model. That was a big part of the Reagan revolution and now it is embraced by corporate Democrats. Efficiency and profits trump good service and equity.
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The amount of overt and covert racism is setting us back decades to the regressive pre-civil rights era. Many charter schools are blueprints of resegregation while using funds from federal and state governments without question. Oligarchs have bought many organizations that are supposed to support equality and justice. Let’s not forget sexism and xenophobia as those are getting the seal of approval from too many Americans. These are days when small minds and big wallets rule.
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“These are days when small minds and big wallets rule.”
Unfortunately you are so correct, rt!
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Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Is this where we get to say, “Heck of a job, Rahmy”?
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Michigan just broke their contract with Aramark in the prisons because of Aramark’s sub par quality.
I don’t understand why this company with abysmal performance is feeding those poor students.
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I had lunch at a French school once. It was ratatouille made from scratch by the women who worked there. I know others whose experience corroborates mine: French school food is excellent. Aren’t we supposed to be the richest nation on Earth? And we can’t afford good school lunches? If only the new ESSA had doubled the funding for school lunches! Then it would have done some actual good.
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Yes, we are the wealthiest nation on the planet but most of that wealth is tied up in infrastructure and buildings and in bank accounts. In addition, the endless wars and huge military budgets soak up money like a giant sink hole and adds to the national debt. The cost of welfare is a drop in the bucket compared to the defense department. To be clear, most of Social Security and Medicare is not welfare. People on welfare worked an average of 45 years and paid into Social Security tax and Medicare tax to earn that benefit.
The U.S. military budget is almost 40% of the world’s total. The United States spends as much on its military and the conflicts it fights as the next ten top military budges from: China, Russia, the UK, Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Italy and Brazil. In addition, the U.S. has more than half of the worlds aircraft carriers and they are not cheap.
The U.S. has twenty. The rest of the world has 17. France has four, Japan has two, Italy has two, India has two, China has one.
Also, the US has about 14,000 military aircraft compared to #3, China, that has less than three thousand. Russia is #2 with less than 3,500.
The only way anyone could be a real threat to the Untied States is if the entire world ganged up and declared was on America.
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I taught in Latin America for awhile. Even in poor schools, women from the community had jobs where they went to schools and cooked fresh meals daily for the students. The kids were well fed, the women were employed and involved with their schools in a positive way. But if we did that, where would be the profit for large corporations?
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Correction. I made a mistake
I wrote, “People on welfare worked an average of 45 years and paid into Social Security tax and Medicare tax to earn that benefit.”
I meant to say “Most Americans who collect Social Security and are on Medicare worked an average of 45 years and paid into SS and Medicare taxes to earn those benefits in their old age.
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Aramark was also awarded the contract to replace school janitors to clean Chicago schools. Predictably, they are filthy.
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Aramark’s CEO’s pay for 2014 – $32,422,382. Reported Accumulated Compensation: $123,886,172. More disgusting than the food forced on the children, and paid for by tax-payers through the Free or Reduced meals program. I’d like to see him eating this food.
Who hires these people, over and over?
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“A modest proposal: Why not invite the Chicago Board of Education–all of them–to eat lunch in a public school every day for a week? Do you think they would show up?”…or…throw up?
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Dickensian.
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This makes me sick. Where’s Michelle and her healthy eating?
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Chicago is becoming or has become a cesspool of garbage with massive shootings, a corrupt mayor who destroyed the chicago public schools and now hearing about the food is just another disgusting issue the city of Chicago faces. The Obama, arnie duncan, rahm connection has done incredible damage and it really is sad that the people of the once great windy city have suffered all due to the chicago connection of obama, rahm and of course arnie duncan – Amazing how now, with obamas days limited we hear that the federal us dept of education will no longer have a big say and that the local govs will now handle their schools. Oh, so obama is saying because I am no longer here we will no longer want the federal level involved in education – this all after arnie duncan and obama destroyed the system and now they want to return it back to the states??? Donald Trump is the man this country needs to shove it up all of these fake politicians who are just plain jane people who just happen to get into positions such as these. Chicago is now the laughing stock of the US because of the chicago connection trio.
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