The Stranger89%
Guest Rant: Seattle Can’t Afford Not to Feed Every Child 65%
By Jesse Hagopian72%
7/21/2026, 10:20:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Appeal to Emotion, and Availability Heuristic, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 28% saturation with 278 hits. Analysis detected 1,580 faulty-reasoning hits from 993 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 60.2% and a BS Rank of 65% (6,816 of 19,477 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 65.00% of the article peer group.
Every August, before I thought about lesson plans, I went shopping for snacks.
When I taught elementary school in a Washington, DC neighborhood shaped by generations of segregation and concentrated poverty, I kept food in my classroom because I knew children living a few miles from the halls of power would come to school hungry.
Years later, after moving back home to Seattle and teaching history at my alma mater, Garfield High School, I found myself doing the same thing.
Sometimes students quietly asked if I had something to eat.
Other times, I could hear their stomachs growling.
And occasionally, I wouldn’t find out a student had been going hungry until I learned months later that their family had been in crisis.
No teacher should have to become a food pantry to make learning possible; that’s why the Seattle City Council’s vote about school meals on July 22 matters so much.
Earlier this year, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson proposed making breakfast and lunch free for every Seattle Public Schools student.
Yet amendments sponsored by Council President Joy Hollingsworth and Councilmember Dionne Foster would delay universal school meals until the 2027–28 school year.
They have also proposed redirecting some of the funding toward expanding food assistance for low-income children on weekends, during school breaks, and over the summer—an important initiative, no doubt.
But those investments should complement, not replace or delay, universal school meals during the school year.
The councilmembers say they are concerned about the universal program’s long-term financial sustainability and believe city resources should instead be targeted to students with the greatest need.
Those are worthy goals.
The question is whether delaying universal school meals is the best way to achieve them.
The mayor’s proposal funds universal school meals through the voter-approved FEPP Levy, which runs through 2031.
Whatever questions may exist about funding beyond that date, they are not a reason to delay feeding children today.
In Seattle, a family of four making $60,000 a year can earn too much to qualify for free school meals, even though that amount is well below what many families need to comfortably cover housing, food, transportation, and other basic expenses.
Seattle has secured the resources to make universal school meals a reality for the next five years; it should use that time to secure a long-term funding plan.
As children’s advocate Marian Wright Edelman put it, “The question is not whether we can afford to invest in every child; it is whether we can afford not to.”
Years in public school classrooms have taught me something policymakers sometimes overlook: hunger doesn’t follow the neat lines that eligibility rules try to draw.
I’ve taught students who came to school without breakfast because their parents were juggling multiple jobs and unpredictable work schedules, because groceries had run out before payday, because their families were navigating housing instability, or because their parents didn’t know they had to complete paperwork for free meals.
I’ve also taught students whose families technically earned too much to qualify for assistance but still struggled to put food on the table in one of the most expensive cities in America.
Seattle families are under extraordinary financial pressure.
The Seattle Times recently reported that inflation in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue region remains at 4.5 percent, well above the national average.
A household in the Seattle metro area now needs to earn almost $92,000 a year just to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment, and rents for one- and two-bedroom apartments have risen more than 30 percent in just a few years.
Relatedly, even many middle-income families say groceries have become increasingly difficult to afford.
Even well-intentioned programs that depend on paperwork and eligibility requirements can miss the children who need them most.
The federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act provides critical protections for students experiencing homelessness, including free school meals.
But those protections still depend on schools identifying students’ housing situations and connecting families—or unaccompanied youth—with the services they need.
Families living in shelters or motels, doubled up with relatives, or students living on their own can still fall through bureaucratic cracks.
Universal school meals also eliminate stigma—no one has to prove they are poor enough to deserve lunch.
Critics argue that public dollars should be reserved only for the families that demonstrate the most need.
But experience suggests otherwise.
Nine states have already adopted universal school meal programs, and research shows they reduce hunger and stigma while improving student participation, attendance, and academic outcomes.
This movement has deep roots.
Nearly 60 years ago, the Seattle Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for Children Program helped transform child hunger from a private hardship into a public responsibility.
Their breakfast programs won widespread public support and helped pressure local, state, and federal officials to expand and strengthen school nutrition programs.
Today’s push for universal free meals carries the same conviction.
Meanwhile, means-tested programs require schools to devote staff time and resources to paperwork, income verification, and eligibility determinations.
Universal school meals replace that bureaucracy with a simple promise: if you’re a child in school, you eat.
On July 22, the City Council has a choice.
It can delay a policy that has already proven its value in schools across the country.
Or it can make Seattle a city where every child has the food they need to learn and flourish.
The measure of a city isn’t how many cranes fill its skyline or how much wealth flows through its economy.
The measure of a city is whether its prosperity is shared and its wealth is used to nourish the bodies and dreams of its children.
Jesse Hagopian is an educator, an editor for the grassroots magazine Rethinking Schools , and parent of two children in the Seattle Public Schools.
He is the author of Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education .
The post Guest Rant: Seattle Can’t Afford Not to Feed Every Child appeared first on The Stranger .
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