Cafeteria Worker Buys Hungry Kid's Lunch And Loses Job.

Discussion in 'In the News' started by Hannah Davis, Jun 24, 2015.

  1. Hannah Davis

    Hannah Davis Veteran Member
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    This is something I found out about earlier this month and since then has fueled much anger online with good reason in my opinion Apparently, there was a school cafeteria worker in Colorado by the name of Della Curry who took it upon herself to feed the kids who couldn't afford a hot lunch. The school apparently didn't have a free lunch program and those kids who couldn't afford the hot lunch would have to settle for a simple cheese sandwich and milk.

    Curry felt this wasn't enough nourishment and she also noticed that some kids wouldn't even get in line for the cold lunch because of the fact that it singled them out as being poor to the other kids. So, she started taking it upon herself to pay for the lunches of those kids who couldn't afford them any other way. Eventually the school found out about her good deed and fired her for it. Their reason what she was doing was against district policy. Wait, its against school and school district policy to feed hungry kids. It isn't like Curry was taking the food and not paying for it, from my understanding she was paying for it. So, what is the big deal, instead of penalyzing her, maybe the school along with the district should of adopted her idea, making a fund that school personnel could give to in order to provide these kids with lunch that couldn't afford to buy it themselves. Anyway, there is now a petition online in favor of what Curry did, and I support it.

    http://www.womansday.com/life/work-...-worker-is-being-fired-for-buying-kids-lunch/
     
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  2. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    This is a sad thing; but it is hard to say if they can fix it or not. According to the article, the school actually DID have a free/reduced lunch for children who qualified for that financially.
    The problem here , is that these kids had parents who didn't qualify for the free lunches for the kids; but they did not have the money to pay for the lunches, either.
    Often this is caused by drug usage, alcoholism, or some other family problem, which the kids do not want to tell anyone about, for fear of the parent being arrested.
    When my kids were growing up, their father was both a drug addict and an alcoholic, and often either lost his job due to that, or was in jail.
    Even when he was working, there was barely any money for food because he was spending it all (plus overdrawing the bank account), but we didn't qualify for any kind of food or other benefits, because he was working and showing an earned paycheck.
    We had a neighbor who would get the big bags of day old bread for her chickens, and Robin would go along and help her. After they got back with the bread, she would send Robin back home with her little arms full of loaves of the "chicken bread".
    It was not much for us to make a meal of, but we were grateful to have it.
     
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  3. Hannah Davis

    Hannah Davis Veteran Member
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    Yes, there are some bad situations that kids live in and sometimes I feel like why should the kid have to suffer because of the mistakes of their parents. I know someone who use to work in the education field. Thy talked about some of the situations that they encountered with poverish kids at the school. She would find out that kids were living in cars or homeless shelters. The school would try to help the kids in any way that they could. In fact at this school they had a table where non perishable food could be left in the cafeteria that kids didn't want. Other kids could go over the table and take the food if they wanted it no questions asked. I think this is a type of thing more schools should consider picking up instead of food going to waste which is happening right now.
     
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  4. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    A better thing would have been for the cafeteria worker to have paid for the lunches. As it was, the cafeteria worker took it upon herself to give away food that wasn't hers to give away. Imagine that you were an employee at a diner. Whenever you gave meals away to people for free, the owner of the diner would be paying for it. You would be given the credit for your largesse, but the bill would be paid by someone else who, if he wanted to give his food away for free, might have implemented such a policy. I don't know that, in this case, the employer was a school system changes the principle. When you are generous with other people's money, that's not the same thing as being charitable.

    When I was EMS Director for a non-profit ambulance service, we had a patient who had suffered a series of stroke, as well as some other problems. He was unable to work and he and his wife didn't have much money, yet they tried very hard to pay their bills. Each month, we would receive a check for $50 or as little as $5, whatever they could spare, to be applied to their bill. Yet, every time that he had to call an ambulance, the bill would go up by another thousand dollars or so. There was no way they were ever going to be able to pay their bill and they felt so bad about it, that I feared they might hesitate to call when help was needed.

    But, as the director of the EMS Service, I was an employee, answerable to a board of directors. Since I maintained all of the records, there would be no reason for me to suspect that anyone would be the wiser had I simply not billed them, but it wasn't my place to do that.

    Instead, I brought it up at a board meeting, asking if I could zero out their account, and I was given permission to do so. The next time they made a payment, I sent them a receipt stating that it was payment in full, and that they owed us nothing. It would have been wrong for me to have done that on my own, however. I would have been credited for the kindness, while my income wouldn't be reduced by one cent. As it was, I didn't rob the board of directors of the opportunity to be charitable.
     
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    Last edited: Jun 26, 2015
  5. John Donovan

    John Donovan Veteran Member
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    This just goes on to show the amount of corruption in certain places. It's so unfair that a person doing a good deed can get fired just because of that deed, but then again, most people don't care, and that's probably why we won't see any change in the near future.
     
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  6. Corie Henson

    Corie Henson Veteran Member
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    That Della Curry is a hero to my eyes, that is if the news is accurate. What is wrong with giving alms or providing financial assistance to those in need be it poor students or hungry passersby. There is a saying that the law may be harsh but that is the law. In the same vein, the ordinanance is harsh because Curry had not done any crime although perhaps that action was against the policy of the school or district.

    At any rate, any good action should be rewarded and not punished. There is this thing called compassion and on the part of the superior there is that thing called consideration. I really don't get it why they are penalizing Curry.
     
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