Some charter schools don't feed their students free lunches. Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is cool with that.

[haele]

22. The problem comes from many charter schools that are basically storefronts or in a few offices -

More than half those in the above survey probably did not have the facilities to provide more than a coffee room cubby with Costco Snacks, a mini-fridge, and a microwave, let alone real lab facilities for science classes or a grassy area for P.E.. Quite a few charter schools are based on "flexible learning", where the child only comes in for a scheduled 4 to 8 hours a week for administration, "personalized" instruction, and testing; and are sent home to complete up the majority of their learning as homework and or online access and "online tutoring" if they had questions. Children are not at such facilities long enough to justify providing a regular cafeteria that would be subject to Health Code compliance, so they usually only have access to little more than a few vending machines, a local taqueria or convenience store, or perhaps an itinerant food truck that would also be there over lunch for the other tenants of the commercial building the school is located in.

I speak from experience - the kidlet went to one of those as an alternative to the regular HS where she was having trouble - we were "encouraged" to let her transfer to a major "non-profit" California Charter School corporation based out of Northern California that had five "campuses" in the city of San Diego alone and another two/three throughout the county. She went twice a week on average weeks for a total of six hours; there was usually no more than 20 students there at any one time, and only three or four were there exactly the same amount of time she was. They had a deal with a nearby CC to use their lab facilities for the science classes and their field and Gym for P.E., so there were always some students off at that CC during those classes instead being at the collection of office suites the "campus" was located in during the month those classes were "held". This particular campus had around 300 or so independent study students from grades 6 - 12 attending for the two years she attended.

The issues I can see with the Charter situation is that if the charter schools 1) structured around a standard full-time school day instead of structured as flexible learning and 2) are co-located at a school, church, or other facility that has a proper food preparation area, the cost of providing the state-mandated meals do not significantly exceed their operating costs; they are already "renting" these facilities or leveraging the costs associated with them, and really have no reason to already be providing the meals as required.

The problems comes about when the charter school is set up in a commercial leased facility - the primary cost-saving measure that many local school districts actually see as the "upside" of the charter school system.
With the fixed cost per student and no additional overhead that most charter school get, many charter school corporate systems can successfully point out that they are not getting the proper "funding" to be able to provide not only the mandated meals and a separate place to eat them at, but the additional certified food-preparation facility and staff to provide the meals and the maintenance of that facility.
It is easy for such corporations to make the case that because most of the funding they receive is only based off the scope of providing the mandated education under a commercial lease rather than at an established public education facility, they could not possibly re-negotiate enough funding per student they are currently getting from the school districts to also provide the proper commercial kitchen and staff to feed the children - especially if they are independent study charters and can claim they do not have enough full-time students on site at any one time to warrant providing a regular kitchen facility. Their argument would be that it is not economically feasible to maintain the facilities to regularly provide meals if they don't have more than ten or so students scheduled during "meal times"; that there may be days that twenty-five or thirty students are schedule with only one or two that may qualify for meals, and there may be days that they have no students scheduled.

Whether or not you approve of Charter Schools, this is a logistics issue as well as a mandate issue. There are ways that legislation can provide Charters with options and alternatives to be able to provide children who qualify for federal and state meal programs meals - such as creating a state program that matches a public school or college/university cafeteria or other facilities with commercial kitchens to provide regular free meal deliveries to the facility by subscription, or coupons/vouchers (yes, it's normally an evil word in government programs, but it could work here) for a "healthy meal deal" - breakfast or lunch provided by nearby diner or resturant for select students.
But it cannot simply be an open-ended mandate leaving the charter to figure out what it needs to do and then try to pitch it to recalcitrant, penny-pinching school districts that see the charter school system as a way to save facilities and overhead costs. Once you get local school district politics and corporate money involved, the needs of the individual student will always take second seat to the overall cost - edited to add unless you can provide them with an option that can "fix the problem" without requiring extra effort, studies, and commissions to figure out how you can meet the mandate.
It needs to be a "these are your meal-provision options" rather than "you have to provide a meal", though. That's the quickest, best way to be able to provide meals to the children who are food-insecure.


Haele