Brand New High School Calamity: Certain Students Are Being Made Objects of Scorn!

Is this for real, or one of those ridiculous made-uppy New-York-Times-imagined-it problems? Apparently, the times reported a month ago that in SF, there are some low-income students who would rather starve than accept government-subsidized food. And now, at last, the SF Schools Blog offers a loooooong rebuttal with loads of context. Here's the gist: yeah, it's a problem, it's a problem everywhere, but we already knew about it and we're trying solve it. (The solution: switch to a debit-card system that makes method-of-payment less obvious. Cost to taxpayers: $1 million, though it'll allegedy "pay for itself.")

But wait. Seriously? Kids are STARVING themselves? We think this is probably more of a failure of the students' judgment than of school policy -- hey, teenagers make lots of bad decisions, and you can't always correct them. "I can't live your lives for you," our school counselor used to say, throwing up her hands in exasperation when she saw our latest piercing. If those low-income kids are such staunch conservatives that they lose their appetite at the thought of accepting a taxpayer handout, well, it's their funeral.

And also: debit cards? That's your solution? Don't you think the bullies will notice who's eating caviar and who's eating government cheese? And even if you made everyone eat exactly the same meal for lunch, don't you think they'd still find a way to figure out who the poor ones are? (Hint: look for sandals stamped with "Pick'n'Save.") Wouldn't it be a bit more useful to buy a bunch of new textbooks or clarinets or give some awesome teachers a raise?

Discuss.