Kaohsiung City plans to cover the cost of lunch for homeroom teachers at public kindergartens. The direction has been welcomed, but limiting the subsidy to those formally designated as homeroom teachers has left other staff who also help out at lunchtime feeling the arrangement is unfair.

• Starting in the 2026 academic year, the Kaohsiung City Government will fully subsidise lunch costs for homeroom teachers in regular classes and self-contained preschool special education classes at public kindergartens, following the practice already used in elementary and junior high schools.
• The Kaohsiung Teachers' Union says lunchtime at kindergartens involves portioning out food, feeding children, watching over their safety, taking them to the toilet and settling them down for naps, making it the period of the day that most requires several staff working together.
• In practice, besides homeroom teachers, teachers with administrative duties and educare givers frequently come into the classroom to help. If the subsidy is based on job title alone, two people may be looking after the same class while only one receives the benefit.
• The union is calling for the subsidy to be extended to all educare service personnel who actually take part in lunchtime care, and for the Education Bureau to set a consistent standard so that individual kindergartens do not interpret the rules on their own, resulting in unequal pay for equal work.

Outlook: With the new school term about to begin, whether the city government relaxes its eligibility criteria before the policy takes effect — shifting the basis for the subsidy from job title to actual duties performed — will determine whether the measure is seen as a benevolent policy or a fresh source of controversy.