We’re back on school lunches again, but rather than talking about lunches being thrown away or honoring black history month with fried chicken and watermelon, we’re talking about something good. Well, something partially good.
Kenny Thompson was worried about the elementary school kids he tutored and mentored in Houston, Texas. So he went in to check whether they were getting the proper nutrition. [...]
What he found disappointed him: Dozens of students were on “reduced” lunches, receiving cold peanut butter and jelly or cheese sandwiches instead of the full hot meals they used to receive, all because their parents had fallen behind on lunch payments that amounted to mere 40 cents a day.
So Thompson took action. He forked over $465 of his own money and zeroed out the balances on over 60 students’ accounts.
Good: Kenny Thompson, today’s Best Person.
Bad: Children being fed cold cheese sandwiches because they don’t have 40 cents.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that our education system is often the butt of a joke. How can we expect kids to pay attention in class and ace their horrible standardized tests if we won’t even feed them properly? Or as Thompson said “these are elementary school kids. They don’t need to be worried about finances. They need to be worried about what grade they got in spelling.”