Urgent: act now to fight hunger in our schools

Short version: please act now to protect free breakfasts and lunches for tens of thousands of WV school children. You can click here to make comments to the USDA opposing rule changes to eligibility that could deny school food not only to thousands of individual students but whole schools and counties.

The deadline to make comments is Nov. 1, so this is urgent.

As an example, I submitted something like this, but you could keep it simple with just a sentence or two.

West Virginia has become a leader in child nutrition thanks to the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which expands free breakfasts and lunches to all students in schools where 40 percent or more of students are directly certified as being low income. The changes to SNAP eligibility proposed by the Trump administration would also impact CEP and could take away meals for one million individual students, as well as many entire schools and counties. Research has shown that universal access to school food has many benefits, including improved academic performance for poor and non-poor students, removing stigma, increasing participation in nutritious food programs, reducing hunger, supporting working parents and reducing paperwork for schools. The proposed changes should be rejected.

For background, here's a pretty scary news release from the WV Department of Education about the dangers this rule change poses for WV schools, parents and students. And not just WV but the whole country.

Please act quickly and spread the word. Thanks!

Top of a good list

Most of the time West Virginia is at the bottom of the good lists and the top of the bad ones. It's always nice when that pattern reverses itself.

That's actually happened several times:

*we're a national leader in insuring children via CHIP and Medicaid;

*we're the national leader in school breakfast participation and school food generally;

*thanks to Medicaid expansion, in 2016, we had the largest drop in the number of the uninsured.

Here's the latest positive news from the Georgetown Center for Children and Families: while maternal mortality has gone up in the US as a whole (alone among advanced capitalist nations), maternal and infant help has improved considerably here in recent years the number of uninsured women of childbearing age has dropped by more than two-thirds here.

The main reason? No surprise, it's Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. In fact, the report found that "States that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act saw a 50 percent greater reduction in infant mortality than non-expansion states."

It's possible that WV's numbers could even further improve due to the recent decision of the legislature to extend Medicaid coverage for pregnant women to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, as noted here.

All of which is one more reason to protect Medicaid expansion.

Three from WV

West Virginia's efforts to improve child nutrition in schools got a shout out today from Off the Charts, the blog of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. The post focuses on WV's implementation of the Community Eligibility Provision, a federal policy that allows school boards to provide free meals to all kids in high-poverty schools. Former first lady and current state Board of Education President Gayle Manchin recently published an op-ed in support of the program as well.

June 30 is the deadline for school boards to opt into (or out of) the program. I'm hoping and working to see the numbers increase this year.

IF THAT WAS THE GOOD, this piece on the politics of coal would probably be the bad and the ugly.

A (VERY) LITTLE JUSTICE. People who have lived in Masseyland over the last 20 years or so might be interested to learn that Hugh Caperton finally won a legal round in his long fight with the former coal giant. The award was pretty small though.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The generosity of the universe

Arpad (pronounced Ar-pod), our Great Pyrenees and security chief for Goat Rope Farm, loves this time of the year. As deer hunters hit the woods, they often leave behind such tasty offerings as legs and spines, sometimes both all joined together. These are sources of delight for a good month or two starting when the leaves start to turn.

The above picture shows his treasure haul for the day. And the season is still young.

For Arpad, it's proof that the universe is bountiful and generous. It's all good. The Pod abides.

HOW BOUT THOSE POLLS? It looks like the government shutdown/hostage crisis thing hasn't worked out too well for House Republicans.

A GRIEF OBSERVED. My friend the Rev. Jim Lewis recently lost his wife Judy after a long battle with cancer. Here are some of his reflections on dealing with loss.

ELEPHANTS get the point. Too bad some people don't.

ENDING THE (REAL) HUNGER GAMES. Here's a look at some recent reforms that provide free meals for all schoolchildren. We're working on that in WV.

WE KNOW FROM "OKLAHOMA" that the farmer and the cowman should be friends. Apparently, it wasn't that easy even thousands of years ago.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Two new things

FIRST, the AFLCIO is taking another look at what organizing means. This approach reminds me of an old idea from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), to wit, people have a union when they act like they have one.

HUNGRY KIDS, SCHOOLS, AND FARMS...making the connection work better.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED