Joyce Knowles can still remember the embarrassment of not having money to pay for lunch at school when she was young.
“I’m sixty-six years old,” Knowles said. “I’m still not over the shaming. It stays with you. And I don’t want it to happen with these kids in Eureka Springs.”
Knowles got a call a week before school started from Sydney High, the nutritionist who handles meals at Eureka Springs Schools, saying the Granny Fund was depleted. Granny Fund is used to provide breakfast and lunch for students whose parents haven’t provided money for the meals. Knowles agreed to help, and contacted Jay Wilks to see if he would partner with her to raise money for the meals.
Wilks, who manages the Jewelry Show downtown and is director of Out in Eureka, got involved with the Granny Fund when he heard kids got pulled out of the lunch line because they were late in their payments.
The two teamed up to work on a campaign to replenish the fund by posting it on Facebook.
“I don’t have children of my own,” Knowles said. “I am childfree by choice. But I was that kid in school who didn’t show up with a lunch. I was appalled at the shaming of the child because of the parents’ inability to send the child to school with a meal. I called the school and I found out the amount of the shortfall, and with Jay and other donors, I took a check to the school. Then Jay raised funds to make sure no one got caught with this again by the end of the school year.”
About 34 percent of children at Eureka Springs School qualify for free meals through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. If that rate were just a bit higher, 40 percent, all students at the school would qualify for free meals. But since that isn’t the case, some kids can fall through the gaps.
“There are families who qualify who don’t apply,” Knowles said. “It is usually children of those families who fall through the cracks. I’m of the mind it doesn’t matter why they don’t fill out paperwork. Don’t punish the person least able to do something about it by not feeding them or by shaming them with an alternative sandwich. Their lives are hard enough.”
“It infuriated me when I heard about it,” Wilks said. “The kids here in Eureka, this small community, should be taken care of. At one point when I was in school, mom and dad went through a hard time, and we had to go on the reduced-price lunch program. It helped everyone out. But there is no need in this day and age to have a child turned away from a hot meal. Every community has this problem. I’m not surprised our community has it, but I am disappointed at the way the school handled it last year, calling kids out in front of their peers. Now the community is standing behind the kids, making sure kids are taken care of.”
This past year the Granny Fund spent $4,600 picking up meal costs.
“Shockingly, that is fewer than eight students,” Knowles said. “It costs $623 to feed a child breakfast and lunch all year, and slightly more in high school. To the credit of the good people in Eureka Springs, we are the only school district that picks up the shortfall with donations.”
High said that the school doesn’t want children to worry about being served a hot, delicious, nutritious meal.
“If their account happens to be in the negative, we don’t want to serve our kids an alternative meal separate from the rest of the kids,” High said. “The goal is to not put a stigma on the child. No one wants that to happen. The school doesn’t want to have that happen. The community doesn’t want that to happen. Incredibly generous individuals and groups in the community donate knowing that the funds will go to help serve these kids meals. We are able to completely take the kids out of the situation of collection. We are not using them as any kind of leverage to get the parents to pay.”
High said they take steps to make sure the Granny Fund isn’t abused. The school works with parents on a one-by-one basis to let them know they can apply for free or reduced-price school lunches.
“It’s a process to monitor those accounts,” High said. “Our school and the kids are so incredibly thankful we have such a generous and giving community. They are really making a huge difference in these kids’ lives.
“Granny Fund members provided more than 2,100 meals during 2017-2018 school year. We have an incredible and generous community that wants to make sure our kids are taken care of at school.”
Donations earmarked for the Granny Fund can be dropped off at the Cornerstone Bank or at the Jewelry Show downtown. They can also be mailed to High at the school, 147 Greenwood Hollow Rd., Eureka Springs, 72632.