Help a child have a school meal

My children go to Ocean View Elementary School, we had put in an application for free/reduced lunches and while waiting their school lunch accounts became overdrawn.

Now this has been on the news quite a few times about how school boards are limited on how much a student can overdraw their accounts before they are stuck with the doomed cold cheese sandwich. While all their friends are eating from the regular menu, they are stuck with basically bread and water rations.

I personally think it is unfair to a child in public schools to be punished and treated worse than prisons. Due to no fault of their own, countless children are eating these cold cheese sandwiches every day for lunch. They cannot eat anything else until their accounts are brought current.

I have no idea as to why their accounts are not paid, or why they are not on the free/reduced plans, but what i do know is that we can help them.

When going to see the cafeteria manager at OVES to fix our children's application, i was informed that the school has a combined total of $400 owed to them from overdrawn student accounts. Once a student reaches -$5.00 they start receiving the horrible cold cheese sandwich and no longer have the warm lunches. Some public schools in our area offer free breakfast and lunch to all students, OVES is only able to offer free breakfast to students while lunch either has to be approved for the free/reduced plan or is charged at their regular price.

As of now, there are roughly 80 students that receive cold cheese sandwiches every single day. Possibly more.

My family was able to afford to get at least 5 of those students up to current on their accounts so that they could at least enjoy a warm lunch for three days. Each lunch costs a student roughly $1.78.

Some schools even have deficits of thousands owed to them!

The goal of $500 is to get the accounts brought current. This will be enough to at least allow the children to have three days of hot meals. If we go over the goal that will give the children more meals.

If we come together as a community we can help these unfortunate children. Even a donation of $5 will help ONE student to not eat these horrible cheese sandwiches. Imagine their shock and excitement to go to eat lunch with their classmates and discover that they can eat the same thing as them!

Our children are our future, help me to make their day brighter and to help them to eat a nutritious meal! Not only will it make them feel loved but it will help them to enjoy their studies and be able to focus more in class with full tummies!

Thank you!

Update- To donate to the ENTIRE District of Norfolk to help erase school meal debt, please go here:
https://www.gofundme.com/erase-norfolk-school-lunch-debt

Update- you can view the news segments on how you can help!
WTKR-3 http://wtkr.com/2017/11/02/mom-raises-money-to-pay-off-schools-lunch-debt/

WAVY- http://wavy.com/2017/11/02/mom-raises-money-to-pay-off-delinquent-lunch-accounts/ 

The Morning Dose on the CW: https://www.facebook.com/Dose/videos/1580641748697024/