"This Is the Big One, Elizabeth!"
On Monday, I wrote about ACTING Education Commissioner Cerf's reformy new idea: abandoning "free lunch" qualification as a measure of student poverty. Cerf is terribly worried that we might be over-counting the number of poor kids in our schools, which means spending more on education - heaven forbid!
But I missed a great point of irony in Cerf's argument; fortunately, our intrepid Editorial Director pointed out to me the absurdity of Cerf's example of fraud in school lunch programs:
A recent analysis by the state auditor estimated that up to 37 percent of participants in the federally administered free and reduced-lunch program are fraudulently enrolled. Cerf cites that finding, along with reports by The Star-Ledger last year that Elizabeth's school board presidentand two spouses of district employees allegedly falsified their income so their children could receive meals, as proof of the need for a change."There is a perverse incentive to sign up these kids and it's a big conflict of interest," state Sen.
