Why does free school breakfast feel like a side issue
I'm the person in the family who reads the school newsletter cover to cover, so I end up knowing what the district is actually doing, and this year what got me was the breakfast thing. A few states went to universal free school breakfast, not means-tested, just, show up, eat. Participation went up, especially among kids whose families had nothing, which was the whole point. The community college version already ran in Tennessee and Oregon, tuition-free, and enrollment jumped mostly for low-income students. Pair that with the pre-K expansion places are trying and a kid's zip code stops deciding whether they get a real start or any shot at what comes after.
It's concrete and it's been tested, and where it exists people like it. So my question is why this feels like a second-tier issue nationally. Is it that it doesn't fit into the bigger narratives people are already fighting about, or is there something structural I'm missing about why it doesn't get the same air as other education stuff?