Dallas resident, Kenny Thompson was–like most of us–completely appalled when he heard about that school in Utah seizing and throwing out the lunches of children “in debt” to the school’s lunch program. Being not only a parent, but also a tutor and mentor to children at other schools, Thompson wondered if there was anything similar going on in his area. Unsurprisingly, there was.
Thompson found that dozens of children in his area were on “reduced lunches”–meaning that instead of a hot meal, they got cold cheese or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, because their parents had fallen behind on payments on the lunches–which cost about 40 cents a day.
So he decided to do something. He forked over $465 of his own money to cover the debts of the over 60 students whose accounts had gone into the red.
Via KPRC-TV:
“These are elementary school kids. They don’t need to be worried about finances,” said Thompson. “They need to be worried about what grade they got in spelling.”
Thompson says many kids he knows with negative accounts forgo the lunch line altogether to avoid embarrassment. But that’s bad for education as physicians have linked classroom performance with proper nutrition.
Thompson believes he made a difference when he made the decision to help those students.
“When I left the building knowing that they were getting fed, they didn’t have that stress,” said Thompson. “The best money I ever spent.”
