A man in Jupiter, Florida, paid off the debt for public school students who had fallen behind on their school lunch payments.
Real estate agent Andrew Levy donated $944 to the Jupiter school district to wipe out the standing debt of more than 400 students in the local public school system.
Levy heard reports that students with outstanding lunch debt were offered only cheese sandwiches until their bill was paid. Fearful that students were going without an appropriate lunch, he got out his checkbook and cleared the debt for every student.
“These children that were in debt were going to either not eat or they would get just cheese sandwiches and I thought that’s crazy,” Levy told WPEC. “I thought you know something? If for a modest sum I could make that change, I’m gonna do it.”
Levy also announced that he would be holding a GoFundMe drive every quarter to ensure students’ lunch bills are covered throughout the year “so that children never have to worry about a hot meal and parents never have to worry about paying the bill.”
School lunch debt remains a problem for Palm Beach County, as students have a combined debt of $51,000.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Saturday that outlawed forcing students with unpaid lunch debt to eat an alternative meal, a practice his team deemed “lunch shaming.”
