There is such a thing as a free lunch at Madison Elementary this Christmas:
A generous benefactor has ensured Madison Elementary School students will receive free school meals the week before the holiday dismissal, Superintendent Joel Jorgenson announced at a Dec. 8 meeting.
Junior kindergarten through fifth-grade students will have free lunch on Dec. 12-19. Dec. 19, which will be dismissed early, is the last day of school before the winter holiday break [Wren Murphy, “Anonymous Donor Pays for Elementary Lunches for Holidays,” Madison Daily Leader, 2025.12.09].
We know the donor is not Donald Trump, because he insists on putting his name on any handouts he has a hand in, like the free but complicated $1,000 investment funds his big ugly budget reconciliation bill starts handing out next July to children born and this year and the next three years.
Funny that we don’t hear Dusty Johnson and other Republicans criticizing these free lunches and free stock portfolios as slaps in the face to the millions of Americans who have done the right thing and pai for their own lunches and educations and houses and such without any handouts.
Maybe it IS Dusty? He’s been an elf on the shelf for a long time.
Nah, reporting back to king don in the kingdom wouldn’t lead to a free lunch for children. He abandons them right after making sure their born.
Oh well, this is truly a good Samaritan. Happy Holidays to you.
Just to put this gift in context: we live in the wealthiest nation on Earth, and those school meals may well be the only hot meals some of those students can rely on getting. Our school district now factors in student food instability in discussions about length of Christmas/Winter break.
Where I’ve resided for 49 1/2 years all kids get free lunch all the time. We voted it in as a group and it serves us, as a group!
But, it’s good that someone sees the need in lovely Mad Town.
Can we get an amount it costs to serve SD goulash, green beans, and apple crisp with a half pint of white milk to all Madison kids for a week?
Mr. Lansing, including the short-order cooks like you who fry up the hamburger for the goulash hot dish, you could do some cook-like math and say 1,200 kids at $3.00 a kid is $3,600 bucks. If you volunteered your time to boil up the noodles for free, it’s probably $3,500. Per day.