Opportunities everywhere

This post has two parts: first a really messed up situation where rules collide with reality resulting in an unacceptable outcome and the second is about the opportunity this provides.

Last week there was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about schools that have had their federal lunch funding withheld due to 'egregious' violations. You can read the whole story here, but here are some of the examples of what appear to be clueless bureaucracy:

• No adult is allowed to hand a tray of food to a child, no matter how young the child.
  
• Teachers cannot handle the students lunch cards, or if they are more wired and have touch screens, they cannot touch the screen for a child, again no matter how young.

All I can say is, really? Do the people who make/enforce these rules know what it is like to serve lunch to younger kids, to expect them to navigate through school lunch without anyone helping them? How many moms/dads would be sanguine in their kids' ability to turn in a lunch card (without losing it) and select the right foods (as defined by the powers-that-be) entirely on their own? And I don't even want to think about those little ones who are new to the school systems and/or the language. (It doesn't help the divide that this is not a problem in private schools.)

The bureaucrats are not evil. They are trying to make sure that there are no abuses like kids being marked as having lunch when they didn't, or being forced in their food choices. All valid goals. And they have chosen the standard method of letting the 'consumer' make the choices and confirm the transaction - except that they forgot that the consumer here could be a distracted and overwhelmed six-year old. It appears that whole school lunch program, especially the free lunches, could be ineffective for older students too. As I have been mentoring teens recently, I learned that the ones who qualify for free lunches often do not want to get them as doing so requires 'special' handling, like picking up cards after an announcement on the PA system. High school is hard enough, and teenagers would rather starve than make their straitened circumstances visible to their peers.

Which brings me to the second part. This is a situation where the solution may benefit from some classic design focus, the kind many entrepreneurs bring to their products. There are many stakeholders here, federal agencies, state agencies, school districts, schools, staff etc., but ultimately there's only one goal - children need to given a healthy lunch. It needs to be such that it's easy and appropriate for the children first, and then one can add on all the accountability, auditability and other requirements to ensure fiscal and operational integrity.

Maybe this is an opportunity for a startup. It is entirely possible, with today's technology, to build something user (read 'kid') friendly, discreet (for the teens) and providing instantaneous and accurate reporting on usage. It could be a money-maker, given the number of schools that need to be served. Of course, it would help if VCs could be persuaded to invest in ventures outside the beaten path, or if someone would step up to some strategic philanthropy or mission-related investing. Most of all, it needs a passionate entrepreneur and a socially-minded one who'd love the idea of making it easier for kids to get lunch. Maybe the solution is already there - that would make a great follow up story.