‘It’s amazing’: Local school lunch debt challenge exceeds all funding expectations
Published at | Updated at
POCATELLO – The challenge to pay off the total lunch debt of students in the Portneuf Valley concluded earlier this month, exceeding all of its fundraising expectations.
Many of the donors to the Pocatello-Chubbuck School District 25 Lunch Debt Challenge gathered with district officials in early May to present a check for the fundraiser’s final total. They met up at the district office on Pole Line Road, where officials invited them back to the district’s food service freezer area.
To completely wipe out the total amount of lunch debt in the school district, the challenge had to raise $6,100. However, it didn’t just raise this amount, or double it; the challenge more than tripled this initial goal.
In total, the donors contributed $21,485 to cover the cost of school lunches in PCSD 25.
“I want to thank every single one of you guys,” said Jesse Baeza, addressing the donors at the district office. “All the posts you guys made, all the money, all the shares, talking about it — it’s amazing.”
Baeza, a local real estate agent, organized the challenge with his wife, Mary Baeza, and their friends Josh and Hailey Knowlton.
PCSD 25 Superintendent Douglas Howe was present at the event and shared how grateful the district is for those who donated.
“The power and the influence all of you have had to present this overwhelming amount – I mean, we’ve had donations in the past. We’re grateful for all of those, but this has to be … the greatest amount we’ve ever received,” Howe said.
Heather Canfield, the district’s food service coordinator, later confirmed that the donation is the largest donation marked for school lunch debt that the district has received.
On March 29, the two couples launched their challenge through a TikTok video posted to Jesse’s account. In the video, they called on other business leaders in the community to donate to the cause.
RELATED | Local business owners team up to tackle Pocatello-Chubbuck’s school lunch debt
And they made clear they intended to go beyond just raising $6,100. “…We’re not just trying to fix the debt, we’re trying to build a safety net,” Hailey says in the video.
Now that the district has surplus funding to cover school lunches, Canfield said administrators will be able to apply it to future debts as needed.
A number of businesses stepped in to organize fundraising events for the challenge, including Off the Rails, the Human Bean, the Press Box, Crispy Cones and Wanderlust.
“(There was) lots of community support; lots of businesses in the community that really stepped in to push it,” Mary told EastIdahoNews.com after the meeting had concluded.
The two couples made quick work of clearing the total lunch debt. In fact, Jesse said they had enough money after only making a couple of calls to some of their contacts — before they even released the video. But they talked it over among themselves and decided they could do more.
“Let’s just keep going,” Jesse recounted the group deciding. “Like, if we can try to get a little bit more, why not? And we said, ‘Let’s just try it for a month and go from there.’ And this is where you guys all got us.”
The organizers also realized that quietly paying off the debt would only address the problem in the short-term, without creating a safety net.
“This proves that when we work together, we can get things done,” Hailey told the donors.
