Hey, welcome to home room. Busted pencils fully-led in education, talk, educated, educators,
talk at education. We are out of the spooky month is after the weekend of spookiness. And, you know,
we are in my favorite month of the year, Jacob November, also known as November, if you're
supporting fundraising efforts to help, you know, mental health and, you know, cure for or cure for
support for, you know, cancer experience by men. It's a men's month. It's November,
rocking the mustash. Jacob. No shade? Start this. Yep. No, shade of November. Yeah.
But, you know, Jacob, lots of things happen. I want to hear about your weekend a bit, catch up
on home room. What's popping in Jacob's world. How was your weekend, bud? My weekend was good.
Johnny, you know, there were some concerns that we might end up having to come in on Friday,
Halloween to record some stuff. But thankfully, that didn't end up happening and we both had
really good Halloween days. And I was excited about that. It's always good. I've still got two
young brothers. One is a freshman in high school. The other is a first year in middle school.
So I think as long as you still have some young kids around, Halloween is a lot of fun.
I agree, man. We were trick-or-treating. It's always the time to get outside and, uh,
and, uh, you know, have conversations with the neighbors. The weather was great.
You know, uh, fun to see all the costumes, fun to see, all the, all the generous gifting of candy,
all the treats. Um, and, you know, I got pockets full of Kit Katz and all the joy. Jacob,
before we dive into the week, though, because yeah, especially when we're talking about treats,
as some really devastating cuts hit communities this weekend. You know, before, let's put
the rest, what's your favorite Halloween treat? That helped, geez. Uh, that's hard because I,
I even, I, I get excited for the bad ones like the, uh, you know, candy corn and stuff. I mean,
that's no good, Johnny. You do not want to live your life as a candy corn guy. But I always max out,
I max out on candy corn. It starts off being this, this treat that I crave that I'm like, man,
I need a giant bag of candy corn. And, uh, you know, I poured an addition, it's decorative,
and it's great. And, you know, handful after handful, it starts to fade away as, you know,
less and less, uh, my favorite treat. Well, I, but I can't, corn is best enjoyed when it's
been an entire year since you've had any candy corn. And once it's been, oh, I just had a handful
of this stuff. Oh, yeah, it's not very good. Okay. Yeah. Holy till next year. That'll be good.
Exactly. Exactly. And, and it's always fun to have, you know, those small size candy bars
and all the sortments. And remember, oh, I forgot. I haven't had an old man joy in a long time. I haven't,
you know, had a kickcat. So with pockets loaded up with treats this week, I started, you know,
teaching. And, you know, we were looking at things, Jacob. And, you know, it's, it's, it's bitter
sweet. I'll keep the puns and play and workplace going related to treats. But this is actually
pretty serious, especially related to food and especially related to food, health, learning,
and young people in our community. You know, we start this month and we start this week,
you know, with the impacts of government shutdown. And I'll get to that in a minute because I'm,
I'm really, I know there's a lot of far reaching implications of, you know, the failure to be
able to resolve things and to have this shutdown going as long as it's going. I almost wonder
and float the idea of things that start to get canceled as we come back. It's one of those
ways of like, well, we brought this back, but we couldn't fully bring it back. And I guess
that's some of my pessimism with government right now. And both sides of the aisles, although
I'm not pointing fingers and, you know, and blaming those radical Democrats that seem to be the
cause for this government shutdown. See, Jacob, I did some sarcasm. So Tim will be proud.
Hey, where is Tim? Listeners might be, might be wondering, well, you know, Tim is not with this
for this home room. He is tardy. He has, he has got an unexcused absence, but we decided to go
forward with things just to see he might pop up at any moment you never know, but he's also an
administrator now. So his Monday mornings might look a little different than ours, Jacob, you
know, I get to throw a lot of class and hop on here with you and, and we can kind of cover things.
But, you know, Tim might be in a meeting. Tim might be who knows? He might be just, you know,
going through hordes of candy from his trick or treating on Friday on Friday. But folks,
no seriously, what Jacob and I were kind of talking about for home room today is, you know,
the impact of these cuts and of the government shutdown, but more specifically around,
you know, the, the, the bracing ourselves for the effects of snap benefit laps, right?
Which is really kind of my worry is not only is this going to have a big impact, the,
the laps and snap benefits due to the government shutdown,
but also Jacob, I say that with that pessimism I shared just a moment ago, I worry because this
is already such an underfunded and important thing and I'll get to defining it for listeners,
like, Hey, what is he talking about? He's going from candy bars to snap. Snap's not a kind of treat.
But snap is an acronym that stands for supplemental nutrition assistance program.
And it's the largest federal assistance program in our country. And, and a lot of listeners,
like myself, you may formally understand this growing up or know it more commonly as a food
stamps program or a food assistance program, right? And it's, you know, there's an algorithm for how
to qualify for these benefits. But Jacob, by and large, this is a stop gap and, you know,
supposed to be a safety net, although it's barely that for most families and communities who
truly need it, it is a way of making sure that children do not go hungry, right? And one of the
things we know is that of the people who receive snap, 39% of those people in our country are children.
So you got to imagine that, you know, a sizable amount of those receiving snap are children
that's supplemental nutrition assistance program snap, you know, it's food assistance nutrition
assistance. That's access to food generally by an amount of money allocated to an EBT card. You
may see that at your grocery store if you're not familiar. Or you're like me and have been, you know,
part of communities and, and then my growing up, you know, it was essential food stamps, a food
assistance program, you know, to help, you know, raise the, it was a ride like idea of all boats
come rise up in a rising tide. Yeah. Right. And so the idea that if, you know, families don't make
enough money to have, you know, livable wages applied towards nutrition, especially for children,
that there is government assistance programs that help, you know, offset that cost of food,
right? Or in some cases provide food. And especially for children, 39% as of Friday,
when I pulled some information, Jacob, 39% across our country of the recipients of this assistance
program are children. But Jacob, also for our listeners more locally, you texted me a pretty
poignant statistic that, you know, share this one because it 39% of the nation's children are
impacted this with this. What about locally? Yeah. Johnny right here in Wisconsin, specifically,
I found a report from the Wisconsin policy forum that said that as of 2024, Milwaukee County found
that 45% of households on snap benefits had children under 18. So that's pretty much. If you're
household, about half of them are going to have young kids living in that house that are receiving
these benefits. Yeah. Yeah. And how does this impact schools, right? Here we are educated
educators talking education. And we've made the argument many a times that if you're hungry,
if you're experienced malnutrition, right, that it's nearly impossible. I mean, it's pretty much
proven to be impossible to be your best learner. In fact, it's really hard to be any kind of a learner
if we're undernourished, if we don't have good nutrition. And knowing this, having in some
out like piles and piles of, you know, research, scientific consensus. One of my favorite concepts,
Jacob listeners may be like, oh, here he goes again, there's going to be a digression into
scientific consensus. I won't go there. You can go to previous shows or I'm sure it will come up
again soon where I will, I will go at length to define it. But in other words, there is,
there is consensus on the research that nutrition is absolutely paramount to learning.
And given such, you know, rather than figure out, well, who needs nutrition? Who doesn't need
nutrition? Who's getting there at home? Who's not getting at home? You know, many schools across
this country, including districts in Wisconsin and then entire state have proposed
just universal food programs for all students. Okay. Well, that isn't necessarily part of the
budget right now and being implemented very well. So we still have hungry kids in classrooms.
And we are bracing ourselves. Jacob, this is that bad news. I hate to report on a Monday.
For the, you know, the ceasing of snap benefits, a lapse likely to happen. I know I'm worried.
I'm very rarely this guy is falling on issues. But I'm quite concerned, Jacob, not about just
the impact of the laps. But my worry is that as we come back to things, do we say, well,
you made it through the laps. You know, we're coming back with significantly reduced.
Food assistance programs in this country. And just returning to some of the some of the points
about how nutrition is absolutely essential to the development of the young people in our community.
And it's not even adjacent. It's right there with it are our schools, right? The social
responsibility we have to prepare young people for not only the next grade, but for being
citizens in our communities for being productive workers for being, you know, just all around great
citizens and a democracy, AKA, you know, working towards a strong democracy, nutrition is one of
those investments that's absolutely no brainer. The more health, the healthier we are, especially at
our early in our early years, the better learners we are, the more likely we are to be successful in
school. The less likely we are to be, you know, kind of pushed into, and I'll say that when you deny
young people nutrition and access to a good education, you are pushing them into the prison
systems where it's way more expensive, you know, to feed, educate, house, and take care of, and I'm
and I'm not even getting into my personal stance on this, you know, the atrocity that I think is
how many young people are pushed towards this life. If you're just a, you know, a fiscally
responsible listener up there, you know, it is a drop in the bucket to feed children, especially
to feed children in school. Think about how long kids are in school all week long. You kind of
bypass the whole, and again, I'm not representing my argument, my argument is like, I don't care
where they're eating. I want the assistance to be in families and in schools. I think it comes
down to feeding hungry young people. It's a no brainer. Make sure they have good nutritious food
so that they can grow. We have all their evidence we need that this is absolutely essential to
the strength of our country and our future. And so the problem there, Johnny, is that when you
gut the snap benefits program that adds stress to your state program or to your local program or
to the teacher who has to buy food to bring in for kids, because teachers aren't going to let
this happen. You know, they'll do whatever they can to help the kids. It adds stress all the way
down the level from this, from the federal down to the individual. And these, these are already
people who are struggling to do these things. Absolutely. I mean, Jacob, you hit the nail on the head.
So that's where I worry when we have these wonderful folks working, whether it's a local
organization or it's a school food pantry, right? Or it's teachers who just know, oh, my students
need to eat. Yeah. And not all of them have access to food on any given day. And so, you know,
they they go out of their way already underpaid and overworked to make sure they have snack
cupboards, you know, healthy, nutritious things that help children in their classroom be good learners.
Well, you know, Jacob, you know, what does this do, right? To like, why are we talking about this
related to education? Well, there's a direct impact of malnutrition on student learning to be
really specific about it. They're nerd out for a second, right? Educators talk in education,
listeners, you like this kind of stuff. That's why you tune in. Not only is malnutrition have a
direct link to a direct impact on student learning. We're talking about cognitive and academic
performance. In other words, let me break it down. It's difficult to concentrate when you're hungry.
I mean, everybody listed can relate hungry children struggle to focus in classrooms. And this
leads to decrease decreased ability to absorb and retain information kind of makes sense, right?
If you can't concentrate because you're hungry, it's not a choice at that point. We can't say like,
hey, look at me, pay attention, right? There's a difficulty to concentrate. Well, you know, here
at Bust & Pencils, we pray we hammer away at how much do we value test scores, like especially big
standardized tests and putting too much emphasis on testing. But in a world that does prioritize,
it's like, you can't have your cake and eat it too. For people who are advocating, you know,
these programs aren't necessary. Or do we really need to make sure does is it the school's
responsibility for children to be fed? Is it, you know, a government's responsibility to provide
food assistance out of one side of their mouth? The other side, we need to make sure there are
high test scores. Well, guess what? Studies consistently show that food insecure students perform
worst on standardized tests and academic assessments. So if you want students to do better, fund the
low cost high impact programs like snap, like food assistance and all kinds of community programs
that come together to make sure children who might not have access likely don't by all
indicators have access to healthy nutrition food. Get some, right? So we know concentration,
concentrating is difficulty test scores are likely to be lower. Studies consistently show that
so we could say we could predict they will be lower. You know, we can even go into, you know,
pediatric pediatricians who have reported on that malnutrition directly impacts brain development
and cognitive processing abilities. So we're looking at a small ask to do a lot of long-term
good, not even auto altruism work. For me, it's a simple, do you care about kids? Sure. Well,
then you care about getting them food. That should be a no brainer. But we could get into the weeds and
say, you know, brain scientists have given us all we need to know is there's reduced cognitive
function and malnutrition directly impacts brain development as well as contributes to memory
problems. All this is school stuff taken. It's like, I don't even need to keep going to build a
pretty convincing case, right? To the jury out there, you the people that this is just
unbelievably terrible for our communities, but especially terrible for the most
in need. Tim would say to the most vulnerable, although I'm really working on not
seeing children as necessarily vulnerable, they are, right? It's not like I could say to a kid,
maybe a third grader like, you know what? You need to get a higher paying job and you need to get
out there and you need to go grocery shopping and do a better job getting your food, right? I
could blame parents all day. That's not going to work as a, as a good teacher. That doesn't solve
the problem that, you know, this young person who is vulnerable at their age doesn't have access
to healthy nutritious food. And we could say my, my counterpart might say, well, that's their
parents responsibility. And I say directly back to my counterpart, well, guess whose responsibility
it becomes. No matter who we decide responsibility is today, it's quickly becoming all of our
responsibility, fiscally, socially, in all kinds of ways. If we want to lessen the load, it's simple
folks, we feed kids. And I know this is amidst a government shutdown with all kinds of other ways
that is putting our communities in the crisis. Just my worry, Jacob coming back full circle
around to this. My worry is that with the cuts, we come back with even less. And then already,
what I'll say is a shoestring program for a slam dunk investment in young people. In other words,
this to me is more attacks on the working class, more attacks on families experiencing poverty.
And that number is increasing by the day in this country, especially with the shutdown. So I know
I'm going, I went on a soapbox about this, but it's like, come on when it boils down to it.
Let's call it what it is, cruelty to children, right? And the direct impedance on success in our
schools. And so we're bracing ourselves this weekend, we braced ourselves. November 1st hits the
laps begins. And hopefully it's a short one. I mean, that's the for many issues listeners out
there. You're like me following the clock, watching every day, I pull up the website to see
the running clock of the government shutdown and to read about its far-reaching impacts and
possible pathways out of it, because it is never good when democracy is in the ICU. And with
the government shutdown, Jacob, I'll pile on the metaphors. We're in a coma. Democracy in a coma.
So I mean, this is these are tough times listeners stay hopeful, right? I think
there is room for hope, Johnny, because like you said, I mean, the program was a shoestring thing.
I've got the numbers here. It's $190 per person on average, just $356 for the entire family on
average here in the United States on that program. That's think about that. That's less than $100
a week for your groceries coming through this program. So maybe how about this, Johnny,
instead of we come out of this weaker, we come out of this saying, and when we bring it back,
it's got to be better. Well, boom, that would be unbelievable, Jacob. That's my message to you,
I'm messaging that out into the universe to say, hey, if there's anywhere, and there's a couple
of the areas too, but if there's anywhere as an educator, as an educated educator, you know,
as a teacher, you know, just as a parent and a community member, like let's invest in a high
return area. And that's feeding people who need to be fed. It just should be a baseline. Like,
if you're young, and like I believe it at all ages, but I can live with the fact that people
disagree with that, but we should find common agreement around children, young people,
ought to have healthy, nutritious food and a good education. And those two need to be there to
support one another because without that nutrition, right, the education piece is doomed. So
public schools, we depend on these programs for students to be their best selves, families
increasingly depend on these programs. And I think they're really important. There's no shame
in participating in these programs. And that's the other piece, too, is it's been stigmatized,
it's been, you know, talked ill about and blame placed on families. Jacob, when you just shared
the amounts, right, it's like debunking the myth. Come on, folks, we're just giving a little
to hopefully go a longer ways. And it's not easy. It's not like we're talking about, hey,
here's just free groceries for everybody who needs it, right? It's really talking about, you know,
a pittance of assistance that families depend on increasingly. We know 39% of our country
and 45% of households locally to the studio. Jacob's sitting in right now,
truly depend on this. So, you know, we started to show off with some jokes and some like
conversation around treats, which are wants, not needs. But we need food, we need water,
we need shelter, we need space, we need a good education system, we need hope. Jacob reminds us
there's always space for hope, right? And we also need each other. So Jacob, man, I'm glad to be
here with you today. Listeners, we appreciate you being here with us. It's the beginning of the week,
beginning of the month. I'm going with hope. Now, Jacob, you turned my pessimism back to my
optimism, my optimistic self. There we go. And I'm excited for for November, Jacob. And now
it's time for your moment of Zen.
If those in charge of our society, politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press
and television can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need
soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.
Hey, pencil busters. Thanks for listening to Busted Pencils Home Room today. Welcome to November.
And remember to grab other great podcasts filled with more Busted Pencils content on Apple
podcasts, Spotify, and of course, on the civic media website. And remember to grab this week's
class in session on Wednesday, and you can find producer's choice on Friday. And of course,
catch the Busted Pencils broadcast on Saturday at 3 p.m. Central time across all the civic media
network stations for one hour of your favorite blue collar scholars, Tim and Johnny, and keep Busted
Pencils.