Rachel Blakeslee
36:48 - 37:32
“I speak from experience as a former teacher in Title I schools of, you know, watching my preschool students save their free and reduced-price lunch or breakfast and put it in their backpacks to bring home to eat for dinner that night.”
- Speaker
- Rachel Blakeslee
- Timestamp
- 36:48 – 37:32
- Community
- Alaska News
- Location
- Anchorage
- Captured at
- November 2, 2026
From the transcript
Um, and so I would echo that any additional sort of recognition in terms of state legislation would be be really beneficial to help relieve some of that burden at the local school district level. And I speak from experience as a former teacher in Title I schools of, you know, watching my preschool students save their free and reduced-price lunch or breakfast and put it in their backpacks to bring home to eat for dinner that night. And then because they're preschool students and they're only 4 years old, they forget that it's in their backpack, so then it rots in their backpack, and then you as a teacher go and find their rotting food that they brought home for their siblings and their families. And that is consistent and pervasive among many, many of the families that we serve. So I would say feeding kids is a priority, and yet educating kids is also a priority.
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