Inside UDJ by Editor K.C. Meadows

I read a story in the New York Times about how so many students - especially at the high school level- who are eligible for free school lunches don't eat them because of the stigma of being in the "free lunch line." Apparently at some schools - and this story cited a school in the Bay Area - there are two separate menus of food, one for the free kids, and one for the paying kids. Also, apparently new federal regulations forcing non-nutritional foods out of the cafeterias has created a kind of first class area down the hall from the cafeteria where kids with money hang out buying things from vending machines, while the free lunch kids have to stay in the cafeteria to find food.
Frankly I am amazed that any of these conditions exist anywhere. Anyone with any sense could see these kinds of conditions are going to lead to exactly this problem - a two tiered system where once again, the poor kids are stigmatized. Some schools "suddenly" waking up to this problem are considering changes like creating debit card systems, where students would pay for lunch with a debit card or punch card of some kind and no one would be able to tell who really paid and who didn't. Of course some educrat would no doubt make the paid cards blue and the free cards orange for everyone to see and screw up the whole idea.
Why not just make all food free for all kids? After all, the taxpayers pay for every bite of this stuff anyway. If it was free for everyone, parents would save money, the cafeteria food would be more widely scrutinized if more parents knew their kids may actually be eating it, and the schools would have much better control over the nutrition all their students are getting.