Secret Santa Pays Off Meal Account Balances for Pennsylvania School Kids

(ThitareeSarmkasat/iStockPhoto)

It always seems incongruous that kids could go hungry in a place like America, but that happens every day. There are millions of poor kids who only eat because of free and reduced-cost meal programs at public schools, and still tons of kids are running meal account deficits because their parents can’t or won’t pay their account balances, and it’s the kids who suffer in that case. This week, some kindhearted Santa decided to give a gift to the students of one Pennsylvania elementary school and paid off all the outstanding meal accounts.

According to the Associated Press, principal Amy Larcinese is the principal at the H.W. Good Elementary School in Herminie, Pennsylvania, and she says that this week on Wednesday a man who used to have a student at the school showed up and said he “wanted to give back to the district,” and he asked if he could settle all the unpaid meal accounts for the school’s students.

That’s such an amazing gift for those kids and those families. Larcinese says some kids’ families can’t afford to keep their accounts paid off, so they have a number of students running negative balances.

One student at the school owed a particularly large amount of money on his meal account, so the “Secret Santa” also paid for that child’s lunches for the rest of the month.

The “Santa” said he wanted to remain anonymous, so his identity is a secret, but Larcinese shared the story, and this one Santa does not seem to be alone, either. Paying off all the delinquent accounts at a school is well beyond the means of most people, but I’ve seen several friends talk about calling their school districts to see if there’s any way they can help by paying off the balances of one or two, or making contributions towards kids’ account balances. Kids with delinquent meal account balances are not the first thing most people think of when they consider charitable giving, but this Santa’s gesture was thoughtful and kind and will make a huge difference for a lot of kids in his district this year.