More than $22,000 of school lunch debt will be gone for parents and students of Ellwood City Area School District.
Baierl Toyota of Mars, PA will present a check to Superintendent Joseph Mancini and John Dzurina, Food Service Coordinator for the District Friday afternoon at the dealership.
“All in all, we are very appreciative of Baierl Toyota and their generosity to the students and families of Ellwood City,” Mancini said.
Michael Hull, General Manager of Bariel Toyota of Mars, stated in a KDKA report that “we have a lot of customers that come in from Ellwood City and we wanted to help people close to home and to see that every student starts off with a clean slate this year.”
Mancini is more than grateful for the gesture.
“This will have a positive impact on the community, we are noticing more and more parents struggling financially in our district and this act generosity will alleviate the concern that many of our families have about the current balance they have,” Mancini said.
Recent moves to curb “lunch shaming” have left the district looking for ways to better recoup the money owed.
“The recent lunch shaming law allowed for students to get a meal no matter what their debt was so this has put Districts into situations where students racked up a lot of debt,” Mancini said. “In the past we could stop serving a reimbursable meal and serve an alternative meal, but a more recent change to that allows Districts to serve an alternative meal after a student reaches $50 in debt during the year.”
According to Mancini, some districts have utilized collection agencies in order to get the debt paid off.
“We have held off on that step but it may be something that we will have to do in order to make sure students don’t get so far behind in paying,” he said.
He encourages all parents in the district to fill out the online application for free and reduced lunches.
“They may qualify even if they don’t think they will,” he said.
According to Mancini, more than 50% of the students in the Ellwood City Schools are on free or reduced meal programs and he is seeing indications that the number could grow.
Proud to represent @ECSchools and accepting a check from GM Mike Hull of @baierltoyotasci to pay off student lunch debt with John Dzurina, EC Food Service Coordinator. Huge Thank you from the Ellwood community. pic.twitter.com/UPQx2GKQsS
— Ellwood City Schools (@ECSchools) August 30, 2019
Wow! Fifty percent of the students need free or reduced lunches? Why isn’t Ellwood City giving free breakfast and lunch to ALL the students? They could have used the 20K for another worthy program like the other two districts did. You are amazig, Baierl! Thank you so much for caring about our hungry kids.