Political Quotes

“Yesterday the Senate agreed to include an amendment which I submitted to the immigration bill. This amendment addresses the serious problem of adding to the administrative load of the already overburdened nutrition programs. I met a couple of weeks ago with the Vermont School Food Service Association and they expressed tremendous concern over the additional workload this bill would add to their schools. Marlene Senecal, Connie Bellevance, and Sue Steinhurst of the American School Food Service Association urged me to take action as did Jo Busha, the State director of child nutrition programs. For the school lunch and breakfast programs the ASFSA estimated that 14,881 new staff would have to be hired nationwide to handle the additional paperwork of verifying citizenship status for each child and working with the INS. If the average salary of new staff is $25,000 to $30,000 a year we are talking about a huge burden for schools--at least $370 million per year. The magnitude of this unfunded mandate imposed on schools could drive thousands of schools off the school lunch and breakfast program.”