Rule 1: No child left hungry

CELINA - In what is perhaps a sign of the times, student lunch accounts have reached a negative balance of $9,000 at Celina City Schools this school year, a sum believed to be higher than in previous years and indicative of the financial hardships faced by some parents.

Seeking to ease their burdens, a group of residents is soliciting donations from the community to pay off the debt. Also, Andy Bledsoe has set up a GoFundMe campaign titled "Celina School Lunches: A Call for Community Aid."

The campaign had garnered 37 donations amounting to $2,260 toward a goal of $3,000 as of Friday evening.

"I am overly impressed and thrilled with just the contribution so far because, again, ultimately it's helping our families," Superintendent Brooke Gessler told The Daily Standard. "Anytime we can do that, our kids also benefit."

The campaign was set in motion when John Schmenk called administrators to see if there were any outstanding student fees needing paid. School officials pointed to the student lunch accounts.

"We ran a report … and it was over $9,000 at this point in time just for this year. It was accrued debt for kids across the district," Gessler told the newspaper. "He wanted to pull together a group of people to help cover this for these kids because he didn't want this burden for families."

The group sought donations from service organizations and established a GoFundMe campaign, Gessler said.

"Given what I believe has already been committed and with what's in that GoFundMe and other private donations that are coming in, the balance for this year, we're optimistic that it will be zeroed out," she said.

Gessler praised the initiative of the group of residents and the goodwill of the community.

"For the families, it's a blessing for them, because you don't know people's hardships," she said. "Some people don't want to tell you, and they don't want to ask for help. I'm so grateful for a community like this because it's helping our families and that's so crucial."

Celina City Schools has about 2,300 students who physically attend classes. The student cost is $1.75 for breakfast and $3 for lunch. The district serves as many as 31,426 total meals a month.

Parents can set up an account via the school's website to pay for school lunches and other fees.

"Students … when they run out of money on their account and families don't put in any more money, that's when we run into that negative balance," Gessler.

That being said, no child ever goes without a meal due to insufficient funds, Gessler emphasized.

"Whether a kid has a negative $5 or a negative $100 balance, we will feed our kids," she said. "They're going to get a regular lunch because they need that."

It's common for school lunch accounts to accrue debt in districts throughout the state, but Celina's negative balance is thought to be higher than in previous years. But if the debt goes unpaid, the district's general fund ultimately has to pick up the loss.

Gessler didn't have enough data at hand to pinpoint the exact reason behind the mounting debt but noted the higher costs of goods and services caused by compounding inflation are likely among the culprits.

"Evidently there is something happening," she said. "I talked to a parent today who said, 'I am pinching pennies and I'm trying to do everything I can,' and I believe our families are doing everything they can. So I would rather them pay to have electric on and pay their water bill, and let us take care of the lunches because their kids are going to eat. I don't want them to have to worry about that, too."

Gessler said school officials, though, will continue to monitor the situation "to try to get some indicator as to what might be going on within our community, what's the root cause."

Roughly 50% of the student body is eligible for free or reduced lunches, according to Gessler. All students receiving benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or Ohio Works First; foster children that are under the legal responsibility of a foster care agency or court; children participating in Mercer County Head Start; and children who meet the definition of homeless, runaway or migrant are eligible for free meals.

Also qualifying are children who come from households with income within federal eligibility guidelines.

Homer Burnett, executive director of CALL Ministries in Celina, definitely believes more people are struggling financially these days, as his organization's food pantry began seeing more clients near the end of the first quarter last year.

"Most people think that they just refuse to work, they're freeloaders," Burnett said of food pantry clients. "But that's not our clients. We search our clients' household income, and it's almost always Social Security or something similar to that that represents their income. There are reasons they can't work. They've been hurt at work or something of that nature, they're elderly, just incapable of holding a full-time job. So they are truly needy people."

The number of families served monthly at CALL Ministries' food pantry has surged by about 30% to roughly 725 families over the last eight years.

"We've probably signed up about anywhere from two to four new families every day," he said. "Prices going up, I anticipate we'll have even higher numbers in the very near future, and it doesn't have any kind of a downward trend whatsoever. It's a real problem out there, and there's a lot of working poor out there that we don't even touch. They're really struggling paying their bills, having food on the table."

Just as telling, the number of students in the backpack program swelled from 315 to 370 this year - and 60 to 65% are in the Celina school district, Burnett said. Participating students receive meals to sustain them over the weekend.

The community can help by making financial donations directly to CALL Ministries, Burnett said. Checks can be mailed to 420 N. Brandon Ave.- Suite B Celina, Ohio. 45822. Celina City Schools will also accept donations in the form of checks with the memo line of food services to offset losses to student lunch accounts.

"It does go into a specific fund in our system so that we make sure it gets funneled to where exactly it needs to go," Gessler said.