Why Hunger Stalks Maryland's Schoolchildren

We begin today with a conversation about hunger in Maryland. Elliot Jaspin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has written a multipart series for the great website, Maryland Matters, about the scope of the problem, which persists not just in poor neighborhoods in Baltimore City, but in places like Anne Arundel County. Jaspin points out that Anne Arundel is one of the richest counties in our state, which is itself the richest state in the country. Yet the number of children in Anne Arundel County who are eligible for a free school lunch has skyrocketed in the last 10 years, up 81%. Jaspin looked into why that is, and the result is a revelatory and assiduously reported series, which you can read here. Elliot Jaspin joins Tom in Studio A. Also joining us is Michael J. Wilson, the director of Maryland Hunger Solutions, an organization advocating in the General Assembly for a number of bills around the issue of hunger.Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.