More washing machines in schools, please


A grayscale photo of washing machines in a row

The existence of poverty is a choice, not a fact of nature. We could end it any time we choose. In the darkest hour of the pandemic, we proved it:

In 2020, when schools across the country closed to slow the spread of Covid-19, federal lawmakers did something unprecedented: They decided to pay for free lunch for every public school student in America, every day, no questions asked.

The effect of the free meals was dramatic. Parents, many of them facing layoffs, illness, and grief, no longer had to worry about the cost of lunch for their kids… Instead, they could pick up a free, nutritious meal at their children’s school, or in some cases even have it delivered by school bus. As a result, food insecurity in at-risk households with children declined by about 7 percentage points between the beginning of the pandemic and summer 2021.

It’s a disgrace that it took a crisis of this magnitude to push Congress into acting. Even so, it was a valuable proof of concept. But COVID-19 is receding from people’s minds, and the clouds have rolled back in. The pandemic supports are gone, and America is returning to school lunch debt as a policy:

In a November 2022 survey by the School Nutrition Association, 96.3 percent of districts reported that the end of federal waivers have led to an increase in unpaid debt. At East Hampton Public Schools in central Connecticut, for example, debt is going up by $500 every week. At one district, the Washington Post reported, debt for the school year has already reached $1.7 million.

It’s obscene that there’s such a thing as school lunch debt. Only a mind so warped by capitalism that it’s lost all its morals could conceive of something so sick and cruel. The occasional feel-good stories about donors paying off lunch debt don’t disguise the fact that it shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Thankfully, the more sensible parts of America recognize this. Not every place has given up the pandemic-era gains. A host of blue states and cities, including my hometown of New York City, offer universal free meals to all students in public schools, and more are working toward this goal.

The best part of NYC’s free school meals is that they’re available to everyone, no exceptions. There are no hoops to jump through, no cumbersome bureaucracy, no intimidating eligibility checks. If kids are hungry, they can eat. That’s the way it should be. I have a son in public school, and while my family isn’t in distress, it’s reassuring to know they have this service if we ever need it.

Free school meals come from the logical recognition that, for schools to succeed in their mission, it’s not enough to have chalkboards and textbooks. They have to have all the things that make it possible to learn, not just a narrow-minded focus on academics. When students face poverty or homelessness or hunger, school can and should be a haven of stability for them. That’s both wise and compassionate.

For the same reason, it’s a great idea to have schools with washers and dryers. There should be more of this:

More than a decade ago, Principal Joseph Mattina noticed students at P.S. 23 Carter G. Woodson were consistently arriving at the Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, elementary school without their uniforms.

Initially, Mattina grew frustrated with the students, asking why they couldn’t wear the clothes that had been supplied by the school.

“One day, one of the kids turned around and said to me, ‘Well, it’s dirty, and my mom can’t wash it,'” he said. “That really resonated with me, because it was something that I had never thought of before. It was an obstacle that I didn’t realize existed.”

This is a pain of poverty that privileged people never have to think about. Families who are homeless, living out of a car or in a shelter, don’t have access to laundry facilities. Even if there’s a laundromat nearby, they may not be able to afford to wash their clothes regularly. When kids’ clothes are dirty or smell bad, they get bullied or shunned by their peers and skip school out of shame.

Not only is this a problem, it’s a bigger problem than you might guess. Chronic absenteeism is shockingly common – as high as 36% of all public school students in NYC, and even higher in some other places. Schools that install laundry machines have found that rates of absenteeism go down dramatically:

At Gibson Elementary in St. Louis, after learning that many children were missing school due to a lack of clean clothing, the principal reached out to Whirlpool to ask if they would donate a washer/dryer. In turn, Whirlpool performed a study of 600 public school teachers around the country to see if they were facing similar issues. The study revealed that one in five students did not have access to clean clothing. As a result, Whirlpool decided to donate a washer/dryer not only to this school, but also to 11 other schools that were in need. After one year, 93% of students who utilized the washer/dryers reported an improvement in attendance. Similarly, in 2017, a Kansas City public school reported that only 46% of students were meeting the requirement to attend school 90% of the time. After installing a washing machine, this figure shot up to 84%.

It’s the same theory as hospitals helping people find housing. People with chronic conditions like diabetes or HIV can’t possibly manage them if they’re sleeping on the streets, with no refrigerator or safe place to store medicine. And it’s not just better for those people – it’s actually cheaper for hospitals to help people find housing, rather than repeatedly patching them up every time they land in the ER with a crisis.

However, making sure that kids have clean clothes is about more than just improving attendance numbers or balance sheets. The deeper purpose is restoring a sense of dignity to students and their families. It helps them feel that they deserve to be there, that they’re not lesser human beings. At that P.S. 23 school in Brooklyn, they’ve seen the effect firsthand:

Now, families can come during the school day to wash their students’ clothes, or drop off laundry for the school to clean. Mattina said he frequently throws loads of laundry into the washer in the morning. The school’s speech therapist also shares an office with the machines and often moves clothes over to the dryer, he added.

… “Often when we tell parents that we have this service for them, they break down and cry,” he said. “Because of the unspeakable things that they’ve gone through and the trauma that they’ve experienced. This is just one less thing that they have to worry about.”

This is the hallmark of a decent society. It’s one way to show we’re serious about breaking the cycle of poverty, treating people as equals in fact and not just in rhetoric.

But more has to be done. Even among the schools that have laundry machines, too many rely on donations to keep them running. This should be a permanent program, not dependent on volunteer goodwill. Like free school meals, it’s an investment in the future, and it will more than pay for itself in the long run.

Comments

  1. Katydid says

    Regarding schools: there is a charity called Donor’s Choose (donorschoose dot org) that allows teachers and other school personnel like principals and counselors to beg for supplies for their students from strangers who crowdfund requests. It’s absolutely enraging that they have to do this. It’s heartbreaking that so often they’re not only begging for things like pencils, notebooks, books, crayons, etc.–they’re also begging for food and clothing for their students. Some schools that have a washer/dryer also beg for laundry detergent. I 100% agree that these things should be provided because they’re so clearly necessary.

    As to providing lunch: as a military brat, I grew up all over the world, and in many countries school lunch is just something that’s provided in the same way that desks and chairs and blackboards are provided. Also, school lunch in many countries is actual nutritious food. I believe food can and should be offered to all students at no cost.

    • says

      Every year on the first day, my son’s school asks parents to send in lots of basic supplies: pencils and pens, paper, tissues, cleaning wipes, trash bags, and so on. It’s more than any one kid would need. It’s clear that they’re stockpiling supplies, especially so there’s extra for kids whose parents can’t afford to buy it themselves.

      I don’t live in a poor area by any means. It’s a middle to upper-middle-class area of NYC – lots of Teslas on the streets and expensive single-family homes. Even so, the school relies on donations from parents. Whatever budget they get from the city, it doesn’t seem to be enough.

  2. Snowberry says

    But but but, people have to *suffer* or they might get *lazy* and refuse to better themselves! Not me, of course, because I already know that I am not lazy and also inherently morally and economically superior. And if the suffering takes the form of deliberately making it near impossible to better themselves, then that’s only greater motivation for them not to suffer! Now excuse me while I “just world” myself into failing to notice any contradictions whatsoever.

    • flex says

      And I would be forced to pay for other people’s kids to eat lunch! I am already providing my own kids with lunches because the school meals are so terrible. How is it at all fair that after being forced to spend extra money to ensure my kids have healthy lunches, I would have to pay an extra $20/year in taxes to subsidize the lousy food they serve. Now I need to balance my checkbook for the $500 I spend a year on healthy lunches for my kids, I’ll do that while I’m idling in my SUV outside the school because I don’t let my children ride the bus.

  3. Katydid says

    OMG, both 2 and 3, 100% this is what’s said! Also, “But I don’t even HAVE kids/I homeschool/I send my kids to private school, why should I have to pay taxes that support schools?!?!”

    In my state, we’re always upgrading the sportzballz palace using taxpayers’ dollars so the billionaire who owns the local team can entertain his friends in luxury in a deluxe skybox. Meanwhile, ticket prices for the average person is completely unaffordable–if you want any hope of seeing the team play, first you have to shell out for a one-time $2500 “personal seat license”…which gets you the right to buy tickets–which, depending on where your seat is, could go for as much as $317 apiece.

    People don’t seem to have any problem paying for this, but balk at something like the library–which is open to anyone in the county and provides not just reading materials but groups to join (moms with babies, chess club, book club, knitting club, etc. etc. etc.), access to computers and printers, and meeting rooms for the community to use.

    And then there’s the schools. After the Boomers passed through the school system, the country collectively decided that education wasn’t worth paying for and it only got worse after the Cold War was over. Having said that, one hallmark of the old Soviet Union was the amazing education the students got. After-school homework assistance was provided at no charge to the parents, and in some places, if the parents worked in the evenings, the kids were fed a warm dinner and supervised until the parents could collect them.

  4. Katydid says

    @ Adam: my kids are adulting and therefore years out of school but I remember well those puzzling school lists that seemed utterly capricious. “7-and-1/3 boxes of tissues, exactly 203 ziplock bags, a pack of 9″ paper plates” in addition to the usual glue sticks and crayons and etc. etc. I also raised my kids in a school system where you wouldn’t think a lack of supplies would be a problem, but it was. I’ve found my kids’ schools on Donors Choose where the teachers are begging for basic supplies that you’d imagine the school would supply.

  5. Katydid says

    @4, you know that self-described True Christians(tm) have never read their bible and attend churches that focus on the vengeful, jealous, malicious, crazy Old Testament god, not the parts of the bible that encourage good social behavior. 🙂

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