After an Elementary school mentor read about the Utah elementary school which made headlines last week for taking away student lunches for delinquent accounts, he decided to look into his school's procedure, only to find out there were students receiving small cheese sandwich instead of a full meal, according to Yahoo News.
Kenny Thompson is a mentor and tutor at Valley Oaks Elementary School in Houston, Texas, paid $465 of his own money to remove the negative balance of more than 60 student's who had delinquent lunch accounts and were being given cheese sandwiches for lunch, Yahoo News reported.
Thompson has worked at the school for 10 years said he would never have thought to look into the issue if he hadn't stumbled upon the Uintah Elementary School in Salt Lake City story, according to Yahoo News.
"They don't need to be worried about finances," Thompson said to NBC affiliate KPRC TV about the elementary schoolchildren, Yahoo News reported. "They need to be worried about what grade they got in spelling."
The school promised Thompson afterwards students would be given a full lunch for the rest of the week even if their accounts went back into red, according to Yahoo News. Student lunches cost about 40 cents a day.
Thompson believes the students should not have to worry about being singled out and receiving a smaller lunch and should be able to focus on their school work, Yahoo News reported. Multiple studies link nutrition to classroom performance.
Thompson said some students would even skip the lunch line because they did not want to be embarrassed of having to have a reduced lunch in front of their classmates, according to Yahoo News.
"When I left the building knowing that they were getting fed, they didn't have that stress, [it was] the best money I ever spent," Thompson said, according to Yahoo News.
