Middle School Teacher Raises $30K for School Lunch Debt

A Utah middle-school teacher, Garrett Jones, decided to use a tiktok trend involving people requesting donations toward personal trips, weddings and dream cars, for a charitable cause. When he uploaded the six second video, he had no idea the video would help raise over $30,000 for school lunch debt.

In the video, the seventh- and eighth-grade teacher at Heber City’s Rocky Mountain Middle School wrote “If 2,673 people Venmo’d me $1 I could pay the outstanding lunch fees of every student in my school because the last thing a kid should be worrying about is how much the own for meals at the place they’re legally obligated to be.”

Garrett said he spoke to the lunch ladies at his school the day after posting the video when it had raised around $800 and realized he had underestimated the amount of debt at his school but figured the donations would at least help some students. As the video gained traction, the donations from strangers kept pouring in. Most of the donations were all small amounts of one to three dollars.

The video touched on the generosity of a lot of people. Jones gave an update saying “I was blown away. I was literally expecting, best-case scenario, maybe we’d get a couple hundred bucks.” Garrett was able to pay the $8,600 student lunch debt at his school and the rest of the funds will help pay lunch debt in the Wasatch County School District.

He said he decided to jump in on the trend because he sees a lot of students hanging out in the halls during lunchtime this year after the free school lunch program put in place during the pandemic ended. He added that he almost didn’t post the video at all but he’s so glad he did.