Bonnie Kimball works as a lunch lady at Mascoma Valley Regional High School in Cannan, New Hampshire. Where nearly a third of students in the district are recipients of free lunches. The free lunches include a daily entree, fruit, vegetables, and milk. They do offer some a la carte options such as sports drinks, chips, or other items that are not labeled as essential nutrition. On March 28th, 2019, she was going about her daily duties, when a student told her that they were not able to pay for their lunch. Instead of sending this student away hungry, Ms. Kimball gave him some food and just to pay the following day. When the next day came, he brought in eight dollars to settle this debt. A district manager was there to witness the entire situation. This kind gesture did not go unnoticed but not in the way that you might imagine.
Once the school board became aware of what Bonnie Kimball did, they fired her. Bonnie did not take kindly to this and took to social media to share her story. This post on social media got her the attention that she was looking for. The school started to receive a lot of backlash and hate for firing a woman who was just trying to help a student. After her social media posts began to gain attention, the school offered Bonnie her job back and even offered back pay. Bonnie refused to take it, she said that they did not care about her and they were only offering her job back to avoid the negative attention that the public was giving them. She even stated that during her training, they were told not to draw attention to a student if they were unable to pay for their meal. So, when she has a student tell her that he couldn’t pay, she stuck to her training and did not make a big deal. Since there was a district manager there and they were not aware of the situation, she got in trouble.
Once Bonnie Kimball’s post went viral, the superintendent, Amanda Isabella started to have complaints from multiple parents flooding her email and inbox. However, Amanda did not have much to say in ways of backing up her decision to fire Bonnie. She thinks that instead of holding the responsibility on the vendor, the school should hold it onto their workers. Which is why she had no problem when it came to firing Bonnie Kimball, who was just doing as she was instructed.
She didn’t make a scene and he even paid the next day, so it was not like he was stealing from the school. Bonnie has even said that she was saddened by how much the situation of her giving the food away even caused. She believes that any person with a kind heart would have done the same thing in her position. The majority of people do not want to see a student go hungry and Bonnie Kimball is just one of those people.
