No Free Lunches in Lakewood

If a program is made available to the public school students, askanim have argued, their yeshivah counterparts should get the same. That was the point Agudah’s Rabbi Avi Schnall tried to get across to legislators when they introduced a universal free lunch program for public school students.

The bill would have removed the current income eligibility limits and allowed all students to partake in the government program, thus ensuring all students have access to healthy, nourishing meals during the school day, while removing the stigma of partaking in those meals. (Currently, only families under a certain income threshold qualify.)

Yet buried deep in the fine print was a provision limiting the state’s largesse only to public school students. Rabbi Schnall, together with political whiz and Agudah’s New Jersey associate director Shlomo Schorr, worked the floor in Trenton to garner support for an amendment to make the bill more inclusive — by allowing the state’s non-public school students to benefit as well.

“The arguments we advanced, focusing on equality, coupled with the recognition that we represent the fastest-growing constituency in the state — from Lakewood to Linden — worked in our favor,” said Shlomo Schorr as negotiations got underway.