CAI’s Executive Director, Professor Robert Fellmeth Publishes Op-Ed in The San Diego Union Tribune

SAN DIEGO (April 17, 2024) – University of San Diego (USD) School of Law Children’s Advocacy Institute (CAI) Executive Director Robert C. Fellmeth published an Opinion in The San Diego Union Tribune entitled, “Much-needed free school meals program must be preserved by state government.”

In 2021 California enacted a visionary program called School Meals for All.  The program ensured that every student regardless of income can eat a nutritious lunch and breakfast each day at school.  However, due to a budget deficit of approximately $73 billion, some in Sacramento are suggesting imposing financial screening requirements on parents to try to save money by limiting school meals to only the neediest children.

According to the Op-Ed, the plan would surely backfire because our “poorest families whose children most need a nutritious breakfast and lunch every day are living on the streets, in shelters, or in cars. They don’t have printers to print out forms. They don’t have computers to fill out PDFs and send them online. They don’t have stamps for mailing. They can’t get across town to talk to a government employee to plead their case. They may not speak or read English.”

Fellmeth also states, “And our most precarious children — children of parents struggling not just with poverty but also with addiction or mental illness — are powerless to insist their parents fill out and submit forms.”

Further, “there is simply no way to impose bureaucratic school meal paperwork requirements on parents that verify their income that won’t also result in denying the absolute neediest, the absolute hungriest children the food they need when they need it the most — when they are growing up.”

To read the full Op-Ed, please visit The San Diego Union Tribune.

About the Children’s Advocacy Institute

The Children’s Advocacy Institute (CAI), founded at the nonprofit University of San Diego School of Law in 1989, is one of the nation’s premier academic, research, and advocacy organizations working to improve the lives of children and youth, with special emphasis on improving the child protection and foster care systems and enhancing resources that are available to youth aging out of foster care.

In its academic component, CAI trains law students and attorneys to be effective child advocates throughout their legal careers. Its Child Advocacy Clinic gives USD Law students three distinct clinical opportunities to advocate on behalf of children and youth, and its Dependency Counsel Training Program provides comprehensive training to licensed attorneys engaged in or contemplating Dependency Court practice.

CAI’s research and advocacy component, conducted through its offices in San Diego, Sacramento, and Washington, D.C., seeks to leverage change for children and youth through impact litigation, regulatory and legislative advocacy, and public education. Active primarily at the federal and state levels, CAI’s efforts are multi-faceted—comprehensively and successfully embracing all tools of public interest advocacy to improve the lives of children and youth. To support CAI’s work, please visit law.sandiego.edu/caigift.

About the University of San Diego School of Law

Each year, USD educates approximately 800 Juris Doctor and graduate law students from throughout the United States and around the world. The law school is best known for its offerings in the areas of business and corporate law, constitutional law, intellectual property, international and comparative law, public interest law and taxation.

USD School of Law is one of the 84 law schools elected to the Order of the Coif, a national honor society for law school graduates. The law school’s faculty is a strong group of outstanding scholars and teachers with national and international reputations and currently ranks 30th nationally among U.S. law faculties in scholarly impact and 41st nationally in past-year faculty downloads on the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN). The school is accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools. Founded in 1954, the law school is part of the University of San Diego, a private, independent, Roman Catholic university chartered in 1949.