These days, school lunches are hot topics, particularly on social media. There have been numerous incidents of children being sent home for packing unhealthy snacks, but there seems to be a more serious phenomenon rising as of late that involves a reality that no child should endure, particularly at school—hunger.
That’s right, there have been reports that kids have been denied school lunches for a variety of reasons, but our story today illustrates just how a school’s lunch policy can affect not only the student, but also their confidants.
Georgia’s Johnny Cook is a man with a big heart. He works as a horse trainer and, before being terminated from Harlason County Middle School, worked a school bus driver.
One day, a student boarded the bus and complained to Cook that he was hungry. When the driver asked the boy why he had not eaten his lunch that day, Cook says that the boy told him that the school wouldn’t give him lunch because he didn’t have the 40 cents to pay for it.
Outraged, Cook vented on social media that night in a Facebook post where he told the story to his family and friends. Included in the text was a plea to those in charge of the school lunch program—he didn’t want to see this happen again.
Incredibly, the post ended up going viral—hundreds of people liked and shared it. Even the head of the school caught wind of it and, by the next day, the bus driver was called into a meeting with the superintendent. There, Cook says that he was forced to make a tough choice—either publicly apologize and say that he had lied about the story, or face termination.
