A Utah teacher’s social media plea to help pay for student lunch debt leads to over $30-thousand in donations. A couple of weeks ago, Garrett Jones, a teacher at Rocky Mountain Middle School in Heber City, Utah, decided to capitalize on the social media trend that has people asking for small donations to help pay for trips, weddings, or dream cars. But in his case, Jones was asking for help paying off student lunch debt at his school.
In his six second video on TikTok, Jones writes that if a couple thousand people would send him $1, he could pay off all the outstanding lunch fees of every student at his school and then he adds, “The last thing a kid should be worrying about is how much they owe for meals at a place they’re legally obligated to be.” The video went on to be viewed over 5-million times and by the next day, Jones had received more than $2-thousand in donations.
Jones admitted in a follow up video that he didn’t know at the time of the first video how much school lunch debt students at his school held and he only expected a few hundred dollars in donations. He later learned that more than $8-thousand was owed by students at his school, but paying that off wasn’t going to be a problem, because within a few days of posting the first video, he’d received over $30-thousand in donations. In a later video, Jones thanks all the amazing TikTokers who’ve helped support his cause and says that any leftover money will go to help pay for the school district’s food programs.
Source: USA Today
Photo: Getty Images