In some parts of the United States, school has already started; in other parts, kids have nearly four more weeks of vacation. Whether or not school has started in your area, and whether or not you have kids, I have a back-to-school suggestion for you: Make plans to pay off some overdue lunch accounts during the school year.
Live tens of thousands of other people, I follow Ashley C. Ford on Twitter. I had seen her tweet from Dec. 6, 2016, in which she suggested people pay off overdue lunch accounts at local schools. What I didn’t realize until I began doing research for this post was that she started a trend. People all over the U.S. followed her suggestion, sometimes even setting up online fundraising for a school district. (This is a great example of the power one person can have.)
That was last school year. The challenge is to keep lunch accounts paid over the 2017-18 school year and beyond. Do this for the families who are struggling to make ends meet but don’t qualify for free lunches. Do this even for families that have the means but leave their kids’ lunch accounts unpaid. The parents in these families could be overwhelmed with a family crisis or crippled by depression. And even if a lunch account goes unpaid due to parental irresponsibility, I don’t believe a child should have to suffer. If anything, we want to give children of irresponsible parents a leg up so that they can become mature, responsible adults despite their family of origin.
In order to accomplish this, you may need to make a few phone calls. Start with your local school district and see if there are unpaid accounts you can take care of. If there aren’t, consider calling another district nearby, particularly if you live near, but not in, a big city. Also consider widening your scope to include parts of the country where poverty is concentrated. Whether you help locally or send your money to a another, needier school district, you’ll be helping to meet a real need.
Children do better in school when they’re not hungry. Let’s support them by taking care of that need.
Please read on for an important announcement:
I’ve been blogging twice a week since Oct. 3, 2016. It’s time for a vacation! I’m giving myself two weeks off and will return with “something wonderful” on Monday, Aug. 28.