It’s been a long time since I was last in a classroom, but one thing I know for sure is that students learn better when they’re fed. Not only are hungry kids a tragedy, but a rumbling stomach is a huge distraction when you’re trying to figure out fractions.
So it shouldn’t be a difficult decision to feed hungry kids. But one lunch lady in New Hampshire got fired for it.
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New Hampshire’s Bonnie Kimball has been serving up lunches at Mascoma Valley Regional High School for almost five years.
And, unfortunately, her time there was cut short when her employers informed her that she had been fired. The reason? Feeding a student whose tab had $8 outstanding. Bonnie says that she thought she was doing the right thing, and exactly what her superiors had told her to do.
Bonnie says that she knows the circumstances of all the kids who come through her lunch line.
“We know these kids,” she told the New Hampshire Union-Leader .
So, when the boy with the $8 outstanding came through, she quietly told him to tell his mom to add some funds to his account, but still let him take his food.
Bonnie also says that that’s exactly how she was instructed to handle such situations.
“I was doing what I was told to do,” she said.
Bonnie said that that was the procedure her direct manager had informed her to use back in February — discreetly tell the students that they need more funds, but provide the food.
“We weren’t supposed to pull trays,” Bonnie added.
What’s more, the very next day, the student paid his tab.
And yet, later that day, two managers called Bonnie into her office and fired her over the tab. She received a letter that spelled it out in no uncertain terms. They viewed the $8 as theft.
After learning of Bonnie’s termination, two other lunch room staff quit in protest.
Although Bonnie wasn’t an employee of the school district but of contractor, Cafe Services, she still had to meet district requirements.
As Cookie Hebert, chairman of Mascoma Valley Regional School Board said, policy dictates that kids get lunch even if they can’t pay.
“The policy is that the student be fed,” she said. “There’s no refusal.”
Bonnie’s former employer, Cafe Services, later denied that Bonnie was fired for feeding a student despite a letter saying exactly that.
In a statement , Jaime Matheson, Cafe Services’ HR director, said “Fresh Picks Cafe, a division of Cafe Services, would not authorize an employee to not feed a student or a staff member a meal. When a student does not have the funds available to pay for a lunch there are set procedures to ensure the student is provided a meal.”
However, Matheson also signed the termination letter Bonnie received.
“On March 28, a District Manager was on-site and witnessed a student coming through the line with multiple food items that you did not charge him for,” the letter reads. “This is in strict violation of our Cash Handling Procedures, the School Charge Policy and Federal Regulation governing free meals.”
The dispute seems to come down to the actual food items the student ate that day.
As the Union-Leader reported, Matheson “implied that the matter breaks down to giving out the meal of the day, as opposed to a la carte items.”
Which seems like an awfully petty reason to fire someone.
