It seems to me that one does not need to put "cheating" parents to the street to make this useful program incentive compatible. How about a simple magnetic card that bills the Hot lunches to the family on a monthly basis. If there are important costs involved with this (as there surely are), well bill them to the deliquent parents. If they don't pay, delay their child's registration for the next semester (and bill interest payments on the balance if you like the idea.)

Here at Berkeley that's pretty much how it works for books lending. You get automated reminder notices for borrowed books that are running late and there is a fee that goes right to the student's account if the book gets (over-)over-due. Next semester, no account clearing, no more library privileges, no admission to sports facilities etc. And I would guess that these fees more than make up for the administrative costs.

The thing people often overlook is what needs to be achieved. We're not after 100% compliance. Here we want kids to be able to have access to a Hot lunch if they forget their lunch on an occasional basis (they're not in the army yet...) If parents decide not to pay manic attention to their kid's Hot lunch, well it's their economic decision (which I find rational) but they have to pay the costs assoiated with their decision.

What you don't want is incentive constrains that so ridiculous (as in moral hazard) that they jeopardize the whole program... But let's not take a simple administrative failure as a general justification to take down things that substancially improve the lifes of kids and other people as well...

Before you receive your diploma at a private university or private school, you must fulfill financial obligations including your library fines, meal plans, rent, etc.

It is because of the relationship between public schools and the state -- namely, that few elected boards of education would institute similar private school policies -- that prevents a suitable enforcement mechanism from emerging.

The one elementary school I am familiar with
manages to extend modest credit in similar
situations and notify/bill parents when necessary
at a readily bearable cost. I suspect that if
the powers that be who made this momentous decision
had spent equal time and energy calling a few
other schools to ask, "How do you handle this?",
they would have found good solutions. This seems
to be an example of deinventing the wheel, rather
than taking advantage of the shared knowledge base.

>> I blame it on excessive weakness on the part of the state....<<

Indeed, it is a particularly instructive example of how perverse incentives can produce inefficient behavior. Prior to the days of "Hot Lunch Committees" kids had to learn to bring either their own lunch or lunch money. Forgetting to do so meant going without...usually just once.

how about setting up a little Hot Lunch Ticket Committee pawn shop, and require kids to leave a pair of shoes (or perhaps a body piercing thing, like an earring) in exchange for the borrowed HOt Lunch Ticket and a pawn ticket, the latter to be returned with the funds for the borrowed Hot Lunch Ticket in order to retrieve the shoe, earring or whatever.

Spare me, Patrick. These are KIDS. Amusingly enough, the last thing I heard this morning was my wife muttering about my son leaving his soda money on the counter again.

Niels Bohr famously couldn't even regulary remember to get off the train to/from University he was so preoccupied with stuff way over our heads. I guess you would have recommended electroshock or something similar?

re: Patrick's perverse concern with perverse incentives, I expect the "hot lunch ticket committee" is a very slightly formalized version of the way getting lunches to kids who forgot their daily money (or perhaps lived in circumstances that made having that daily money sometimes challenging) used to be accomplished "in the good ol days" -- in fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the need for something so formal as a "committee" has a lot to do with changes in the way school lunches are provided -- many of these services have become more business like and "efficient," leaving less wiggle room for getting lunches to feckless kids who forgot their tickets on a given day. As J-P S observes, matching kids to lunches is the goal.

Any damn fool who would harm a child to avoid making a phone call, should be fired (and then shot) and his/her salary used to make up any shortfall.

Any damn fool who would harm a child to avoid making a phone call, should be fired (and then shot) and his/her salary used to make up any shortfall.

>> Spare me, Patrick. These are KIDS. Amusingly enough, the last thing I heard this morning was my wife muttering about my son leaving his soda money on the counter again.<<

That they are KIDS, is why it is important to teach them to organize their lives. It's usually too late when they become adults.

BTW, only his "soda money" gets left behind?

We must all learn to be like Patrick. We must all learn to be like Patrick. We must all learn to be like Patrick. Spartans all, even us girls.

I dunno. I think Patrick may have a point here. If a kid misses lunch once, he or she is not going to die (although the kid will be distracted and miserable the rest of the afternoon), and will be much less likely to forget his or her lunch tickets in the future.

HOWEVER, what if the problem isn't with the kid? What if it's with the kid's parents? What if the parents don't have the money to purchase lunch tickets, and that's why the kid ends up "borrowing" them? Or what if the parent is too irresponsible or disorganized to remember to purchase tickets? Should the kid be punished by having to go hungry for an afternoon?

Nothing is as simple as it seems.

Patrick crosses the line from the Heinlein of "Red Planet" to the Heinlein of "Starship Troopers."

Come on, Patrick. Do you have kids? Do they speak to you? Without using curse words?

As a former public school student, I can testify that the free market for subprime loans is alive and well on the playground. People with bad credit histories (viz., me, grades 6 to 12) were charged interest for these microloans of $1.25-$1.50 at the rate of a quarter a day.

My friends all voted for Bush in 2000.

Has anyone ever done an analysis of schoolyard economics? Heck, I charged a friend of mine usurious rates to borrow copies of Nintendo Power.

If we don't harden those kids, they're never going to become the fierce soldiers America desperately needs to make the 21st century a century of freedom, justice and democracy. God bless America.

Would it be too much to expect people who run a school system to know the difference between the verb "lend" and the noun "loan"?

Yes.

I like "a different chris"'s idea of electroshock, but why not have each kid set up a "Hot Lunch Ticket" trust fund? Each kid (or parent) could put as much money in the trust fund as needed and then the trust fund would be drawn down each time he needed a Hot Lunch Ticket.

American children are, by and large, too fat anyway. I suggest that children who forget their tickets are encouraged to beat up one of the unpopular kids and take his lunch.

Tangentially to which, I couldn't decide whether to append this comment to this story or the one below, but while more conscientious and soft-left parents are busy with "Interesting Math Calculations", my own son and heir is currently being put to work studying Archimedes' equations for first- and second- order levers through the application of a good solid standing arm bar.

"If the human elbow joint can stand up to 30 Newtons of pressure, and the forearm of an average preschooler is nine inches from elbow to wrist ..."

another possible application to interesting math calculations:

Suppose on the first day of school one child forgot his/her $2 lunch money, and had to borrow from the Hot Lunch Ticket fund. On the second day of school, two students forget and need to borrow. On the third day, four students forget lunch money and need to borrow.

If this pattern continues throughout the school year (assume that's 175 school days, for the sake of argument), and no loans are repaid, how big is the Hot Lunch Ticket Committee's "loans receivable" balance?

it beats a chess board and kernels of corn, I think

David,

That's why we should put liens on their houses! :)

My children's school is ahead of Ross. Basically parents pay in and the fund is drawn down. BVES has saddled itself with an unnecessarily complicted accounting system. Bear in mind that the potential customer base is no more than a few hundred, and verifying identity should be a minimal problem. Just check names off the list as they go through the line. The lunch ladies/persons can handle it with little more effort than simply collecting the tickets. What we have here is vestpocket example of bureaucratic sclerosis.

Another instructive lesson:

>> As a former public school student, I can testify that the free market for subprime loans is alive and well on the playground. People with bad credit histories (viz., me, grades 6 to 12) were charged interest for these microloans of $1.25-$1.50 at the rate of a quarter a day.<<

Sounds more efficient than a top-down "hot lunch committee". Maybe we should forward this to Krugman and Wells for their forthcoming textbook.

This guy probably went to a school with a Hot Lunch Committee:

<<--------quote------------
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Florida State quarterback Chris Rix was suspended for the Nokia Sugar Bowl on Tuesday because he overslept and missed a final exam.

The move leaves the Seminoles without their top two quarterbacks for the Jan. 1 game against Southeastern Conference champion Georgia. Backup Adrian McPherson was kicked off the team last month after being accused of stealing a check.

Rix slept through a religion exam, an automatic suspension under a rule established after former Seminoles star Deion Sanders played in the 1989 Sugar Bowl despite not taking any final exams.

"It's an academic decision, there's no chance for him to play in the Sugar Bowl,'' coach Bobby Bowden said.
-------------endquote--------->>

or maybe earlier on, rix missed some meals because of the lack of a HSLC and the loss left him with chronic inattentiveness.

My son's school has the same "pay in advance, draw down the balance" scheme that Ken Doran describes.

Patrick,

Sorry for the Heinlein quip. It's finals week back at the ranch.

">> As a former public school student, I can testify that the free market for subprime loans is alive and well on the playground. People with bad credit histories (viz., me, grades 6 to 12) were charged interest for these microloans of $1.25-$1.50 at the rate of a quarter a day.<<

Sounds more efficient than a top-down "hot lunch committee". Maybe we should forward this to Krugman and Wells for their forthcoming textbook."

Yes, but then Krugman would cite it as an obvious example of how Republicans (that is, my friends) are exploiting the middle-class. :)

Back to the substantive issue--this is a tough one, as Brad hints. There should definitely be a backstop for kids whose parents aren't together enough to give them the money, but I'm unsure how to put that together. Ideas?

>>Would it be too much to expect people who run a school system to know the difference between the verb "lend" and the noun "loan"?<<

That depends on whether you want to make immigrants second or third class citizens. BTW, I don't run anything but my life and marathons when I have the opportunity to do so...

Also, it's (not so) interesting to note that when so-called "neo-liberals" argue for a smarter market solutions to an elementary market failure (moral hazard), they get all the conservatives on their backs, like good like little soldiers. Amen!

Who is getting on whose back, Jean-Philippe? For pointing out the simple incentives at work (on an economists blog!), I've gotten:

"I guess you would have recommended electroshock or something similar?",

"We must all learn to be like Patrick. We must all learn to be like Patrick. We must all learn to be like Patrick. Spartans all, even us girls."

and,

"If we don't harden those kids, they're never going to become the fierce soldiers America desperately needs to make the 21st century a century of freedom, justice and democracy. God bless America."