No Such Thing As A Free Lunch: A Call to Action for the Black Church!

When I was hungry, you prayed that I would find food…when I was hungry, you FED me! Jesus was able to take the meal of one poor child and feed a multitude of persons. What will you do with what you have?

Congress lifted the financial considerations for its Free and Reduced Lunch Program during the pandemic to provide free lunch for all children enrolled in public schools in the United States. This funding is scheduled to end as the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year begins. Persons from the working lower middle class who have been the greatest beneficiaries of this expansion during the pandemic. Children also benefited because this expansion eliminated the shame that was previously associated with being a recipient of the free lunch program. It became the scarlet letter of P, identifying to all of their classmates that their family lived in poverty.

What happens when poverty becomes a factor in the quality of education and access to opportunities for students? Public education in the United States has been tarnished by the stain of poverty being utilized as a barrier to opportunities for educational access and advancement. When the Supreme Court made its decision in the Brown case that public education should be desegregated those with financial resources began to look to other options to retain their access and opportunities to a better education for their children. The strategies deployed caused the federal government to create the United States Department of Education as a part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty Campaign. Public education received another blow in the Independent School District of San Antonio v. Rodriguez decision where more affluent communities were able to carve out school districts to preserve their financial resources for their children rather than spreading them to fund education in low income communities. This separation created a gap in the amount of funding public schools receive per student because the primary funding of public education comes from local property taxes.

The concept of providing students with a free meal did not begin with the federal government or even local school districts. The widespread application of this practice began with the Black Panther Party which provided students with a free breakfast on their way to school. The Black Panther Party demonstrated what it means for a community to come together and invest in the creation of educational opportunities and access. One of the greatest culprits today for these low income communities are the churches which sit in these communities. These churches occupy property which are exempted from local property taxes — property taxes used for things like funding public education — and often are the most valuable properties in these communities. The question on the matter of faith and law is how are these churches utilizing their property in order to provide and create educational access and opportunities? We know from the efforts of the Black Panther Party that grassroots actions can make a drastic difference in the landscape when deployed even on a small scale. Many of our churches sat vacant and unused during the pandemic. Churches have felt the expense of these unused buildings in both mortgages and upkeep of their facilities. We must be compelled to intervene and use these resources for the good of our communities.