By Shelby Spreier on February 1, 2024
Saline County Farm Bureau Helps Feed School Kids
After reading an article in the local paper, Lindsay Garber, a Farm Bureau Financial Services (FBFS) agent in Salina, was inspired to make a change. The article she read addressed the challenges school districts are facing due to the accumulation of unpaid school meal charges. The unpaid accounts can directly affect operating budgets and, in some cases, lead to limited meal options for students.
“It was apparent these unpaid school meal charges were becoming a struggle for school districts across the nation,” Garber says.
According to Garber, this issue was highlighted by the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), which granted free lunches to all students for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the program ended, schools returned to the pre-pandemic system where low-income families apply for free or reduced-price lunches
based on their annual income.
Garber felt she could help with the challenge and wanted to create a fund to cover the unpaid charges to ensure
students at USD 307 were receiving a full meal for lunch.
Serving approximately 400 mostly rural students from agricultural families, the district found itself with an unpaid balance of $5,083.61 at the end of the 2022-23 school year, the equivalent of nearly 1,600 lunches.
FUND THE FOOD
With an idea in mind and a goal in place, the logistics of the project still needed to be worked out. Finding funds to resolve the unpaid school meal charges was the next step.
While attending the annual FBFS Valentine’s banquet, Garber learned about KFB’s End Hunger campaign, which provides grant funding for local hunger initiatives.
The timing of reading the article and attending the banquet pushed her idea into reality.
Garber secured the grant funding and additional donations from Saline County Farm Bureau, Tim VanDonge & Associates and Garber’s FBFS agency to create the USD 307 Love Lunch Account.
“The purpose is to financially assist students of USD 307 who may have a long-standing overdue lunch account balance,” Garber says. Looking forward, Garber says the hope is to renew the End Hunger grant at the beginning of 2024 and fund the USD 307 Love Lunch Account with a total of $6,250.
“As agents and board members of the Farm Bureau family, we serve our communities on many different levels,” Garber says. “This is just one small way we were able to partner together to offer kindness and make a difference.”
Learn more about Kansas Farm Bureau’s End Hunger program here.
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Shelby Spreier
Shelby Spreier was born and raised in Kansas and has always been involved in the agricultural industry. With a sweet spot in her heart for Kansas farmers and ranchers, her passion lies in telling their stories. She enjoys traveling to meet new people and seeing the diversity of agriculture.
