I get that, and that is why we have SNAP, so that poor parents can feed their kids.
Why feed them again at school? It seems like we have two programs aimed at solving the exact same problem, hungry kids.
All while the schools are running out of money.
Take your average grade school. 500 kids. If they feed them breakfast and lunch each day at a cost of $2 a meal, for all of the 184 school days, that is $184,000 a year. Now if all the schools were over-funded and didn't have any financial problems, then fine. But almost every school in Michigan is underfunded.
Why not use that $184,000 a year to honor teachers contracts, provide more teachers / para-pros, purchase new tech, etc.
It's not like the poor kids don't already get money from the state for food. They absolutely do.
So poor kids still eat for free, and the schools now have an extra ~$200K a year each to invest in their building, employees, and resources.
We have teachers, really good and very qualified teachers that really want to work in Michigan but many of them are leaving to go to other states (Nevada, Arizona, Florida, & North Carolina especially). Maybe we could keep those teachers here if we were more competitive in pay.
Just recently Marysville School District attempted to pass a millage and failed, now they are looking at suspending step increases next year. But they have enough money coming into the district, it's just earmarked for specific things, one of which is feeding the kids. But the kids don't need "free" food, they need good qualified teachers. The well off kids already have food, and the poor kids have SNAP. Now the district is begging for an additional $400,000 a year, when they already spend over $1,000,000 a year on food that is not necessary.
Or at very least only offer the free food to children that already receive SNAP, it could just be an added benefit offered by SNAP, that could cut the cost of free school food by 84%, or (theoretically) saving a district like MPS ~$800,000 a year. $800,000 a year can hire more teacher, more para-pros, they could fix their buildings, etc.