It's a good start. Now, make it permanent, and nation-wide
Then feed those kiddos, woman!
The Houston Independent School District announced some fine news Wednesday: Once the public schools are dried out and back in session, parents won’t have to worry about lunch fees for the 2017-2018 school year. The school will provide free meals to all students who want them, up to three a day, thanks to a waiver from the US Department of Agriculture granting emergency approval for all the district’s families, under the National School Lunch/Breakfast Program.
The school district is still asking parents to complete the applications online, however, to ensure adequate funding and to track student data.
“The flooding that is affecting the city of Houston has been devastating to so many. Some of the areas that are the hardest hit are filled with working parents whose limited funds will need to go toward recovery efforts,” said Houston ISD Superintendent Richard Carranza. “This waiver will give our families one less concern as they begin the process of restoring their lives. It will also provide a sense of normalcy by allowing students to have access to up to three nutritious meals each and every school day.”
While some Houston schools have been flooded, others have been serving as shelters for people in the community. It’s not yet certain when all the schools will be able to reopen, according to superintendent Carranza. Every effort will be made to help kids get back to something like a normal-ish school year, even if their families have had to evacuate to other parts of the city:
“In no way, shape or form do I feel this is going to be a lost year,” says Carranza. “I have every expectation that, you know, we’ll look back at the end of the school year and just be tremendously proud of how our city came together, how the nation came to wrap its arms around Houston.”
The biggest challenge isn’t necessarily the school facilities themselves; it’s making sure the roads and other infrastructure are restored to handle the 200,000 students in the district’s 280 schools. District crews have begun assessing damage; by Tuesday, they’d made it to 75 school campuses, sometimes having to get there by boat. Roughly half had some kind of damage — sometimes just minor leaks, but some schools had several feet of water in them.
If we were in third grade, we would insist the schools be kept flooded year round so we could go from class to class in an inflatable raft. Don’t go talking to us about polluted filthy water and structural danger and mold and inaccessibility, we are thinking like an eight-year-old here and it would be fun! Until our feet got too pruney.
The other challenge for getting the schools back in service, of course, is the personnel — a lot of teachers and staff have evacuated and may have lost their homes, so there may be a lot of shuffling. Carranza said a preliminary decision on when schools could open would be made late this week. He’s also been getting advice from administrators of schools that have dealt with similar disasters, and says the goal will be flexibility: Some schools may have to merge student populations if buildings are unavailable, and if large numbers of families are still living in shelters, then buses will go to the shelters.
Carranza, who is starting in his second year as superintendent, says the district is
aggressively trying to communicate with its students and staff over social media and the website, in both English and Spanish […]
“I’m heartbroken for our families and I’m heartbroken for our employees and I’m heartbroken for our city because we’re going to be in pain for a little while. I think the more we can do to come together, the better.”
And the kids are going to get fed. In the HISD press release on the free meals, Nutrition Services Officer Betti Wiggins (is that a Head Lunch Lady name? It is!) said,
We want to reduce any stress connected to food while families work toward getting their personal affairs in order. All HISD students will have access to good food, made with as many local and fresh ingredients as possible and served with love and a smile.
At the risk of sounding like damn Pollyanna optimists, we’re betting there’ll be no shortage of volunteers to help the schools get back to doing school stuff. If you want a signal that people are already in a rush to help, we’d note that the Houston ISD Foundation’s “Donate” page is currently overwhelmed. Give them a little time to sort that out, and come back. And the district’s Twitter feed is full of news of people raising money and donating supplies (disaster tip #1: Unless you have a whole school ready to donate, always give money!)
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There was some bad post about why misgendering Caitlyn Jenner is good and I won’t respond directly to it but this needed to be said explicitly- if you believe that misgendering a trans person is okay because they’re bad, you’re saying that you don’t actually believe people are the genders the say they are, and that you’re basically just playing along to be nice
by Eleanor Sheehan on Splinter, shared by Lauren Evans to Jezebel
Senator Kamala Harris, who has previously expressed measured support of a single-payer healthcare solution, has officially jumped on-board. On Wednesday, Harris announced that she would co-sponsor a Medicare-for-All bill that her colleague, Senator Bernie Sanders plans to introduce when the senate’s summer recess…
Every spring, I swear I'm going to get a hummingbird feeder for the cats.
Meet Melanie Barboni, an assistant researcher in the UCLA Earth, Planetary and Space Science program, who is also known as the ‘hummingbird whisperer’. She built a community of 200 hummingbirds who live outside her office and come to complain if she’s late to serve their dinner.
Barboni has always been a bit obsessed with hummingbirds – even when she was a child in Switzerland, a country with an almost non-existant population of this species. “My dearest dream as a child was to see hummingbirds. Imagine my joy when I found out that my next job assignment would bring me to Los Angeles, where hummingbirds live year-round,” says Barboni.
The woman adds: “I cannot go to a place where they are not there… This is cheesy, but I have seen them help people. They make my life happy. Having a crappy day? Who cares — there are hummingbirds around… Having a good day? Hummingbirds make it better…”
because there's nothing arbitrary at all about deciding you can eat cinnamon nutmeg and ginger only in certain months. And remember, guys, if you eat anything pumpkin spiced, your penis will fall off and no one will respect you anymore.
You may have noticed that pumpkin spice, the wildly popular flavor that is NOT made from pumpkin, is popping up in products...in August.
that the people who care about you aren’t, in fact, incrementally & constantly adjusting their opinion of you based on how stupid or cool your last interaction with them was….is something i actively try believing in every single day & when it works it brings my heart great peace
how fucking weird would it be if babies cried while they were still in the womb like can u imagine a woman walking around and there’s just this muffled scREAMING coming from her stomach
courtney what the fuck
fun fact: fetuses actually do cry in the womb. they can’t make noise though because their lungs are still filled with fluid. x
In the womb, no one can hear you scream.
what’s a fetus even cry about? Umbilical cord taxes? Why don’t they come out of their cushy baby cave and join the real fuckin world for a change that’ll give em somethin to cry about
As much I distrust most of humanity, the one thing that I love about us is that we HAVE to be told to put out own mask on before assisting other people when something goes wrong on an airplane.
“You can’t pour from an empty cup. Take care of yourself first.”
Even if it makes people uncomfortable, I will love who I am.
TWU: What is the mission?
Janelle Monáe: “To make music that unites, I really want to promote individuality. I want people to be able to look at the music we have as one that makes them feel comfortable in being unique and I want us to celebrate our differences.”
I will never not reblog this. The 2 guys in the back are just ❤❤❤
Always reblog.
people who get hyped up for other people are the greatest people you can have in your life.
Love their reactions. They aren’t worried about being emasculated, they aren’t insecure, they are just genuinely impressed that she’s lifting like a beast!
Shocking News Update: giving workers a living wage that actually allows them to afford basic necessities while being able to save to treat themself to something nice sometimes has not lead to the destruction of the economy and the downfall of civilisation as we know it
Republicans everywhere left baffled
*GASP*
It’s almost like this is… consistent with 70 years of documented impact of minimum wage increases…
“today’s the Feast of St.Guinefort: a greyhound who saved a baby from a snake, was martyred & became a saint. let us honor this very good boy https://t.co/haI4VPgrpL”
A lot of people and organizations have been chipping in to help the Hurricane Harvey relief efforts in Texas, and one particularly charitable famous person is Sandra Bullock, who recently donated $1 million to the American Red Cross. That’s according to People, which says that Bullock released a brief statement saying…
But if there aren't any boys on the island, what are all those going to fight about?
Two Hollywood broskis are gonna tuuuhtally flip the gender script by adapting Lord of the Flies, a stony classic novel, for the big screen—but instead of populating it with boys, who are known for their “aggression,” they’re going to have it be all about GIRLS, who are known for... NOT their aggression! TASTY WAVES!…
Soap has one job. It’s supposed to help clean things. Instead, Dr. Brown’s soap, which is marketed as “natural” and sold for use on dishes and baby bottles, has been recalled because it may be contaminated with bacteria.
The company asks that customers stop using the product immediately. If you’ve used the soap to wash bottles or dishes, you should boil them or run them through a sanitizer cycle on your dishwasher if it has that option.
What to look for
Products included in this recall were sold from September 2016 to June 2017. You might have purchased them from Amazon.com, or 4 Our Little Ones, Babies R’ Us, Bebeang, Buy Buy Baby, Drugland Pharmacy, Family First Pharmacy, Global Nutrition Trading, Macro, or Turquoise.
