LIVE: Erasing School Lunch Debt

You can help local families by keeping school lunch debt out of the hands of collections agents.

We all know kids who are stressed because they’re hungry can’t concentrate enough to learn well in school.

But for some families, the stress of paying for school lunches lasts long after school’s out for summer.

Districts that struggle under the burden of unpaid school lunch debt have now started to turn that debt over to collections agencies.

That can make a bad situation even worse for cash-strapped families, as they go from wondering how they’ll pay their mounting bills to wondering how their credit rating will be affected by collections.

That’s why local nonprofit the Great North Pole is stepping in to help.

Instead of waiting until around Christmastime, when they typically do the bulk of their childhood-hunger fighting fundraising, the group will match up to $20,000 in donations to defray school lunch debt for families in Cass and Clay Counties.

“If they don’t get it taken care of, it’ll carry over and Christmas will be affected,” said board member Rachel Thurs.

She and fellow board member Sara Stoltz sat down live in-studio with the Morning Show’s Emily Welker to talk about their fundraising efforts to erase thousands of dollars of debt for families in the region, the donations that have already started rolling in since the fundraiser started

launched last week, and how you can get involved.

How to help: