In Pocatello, Idaho, a lunch lady named Dalene Bowden has been fired for giving a hot lunch to a needy 12-year-old student. She was dismissed for “theft.” The meal cost a grand total of $1.70.
Bowden feels, understandably, that even though her actions were outside of her employer’s guidelines, she shouldn’t have been fired. She even offered to reimburse the school for the meal, she says, but her supervisor wouldn’t take it.
This doesn’t seem like a practical understanding of resource distribution in a country where the Department of Agriculture found 15.3 million children lived in homes with little to no food in 2014.
“This is just breaking my heart,” Bowden said.
Idaho’s District 25 dismissed Bowden in a letter, according to the Idaho State Journal, citing her “theft of school district property and inaccurate transactions when ordering, receiving and serving food.” After learning of her dismissal, a groundswell built on social media, driving 1,800 people in her community to sign a petition urging the district to reinstate the food worker.