WILSON COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) – In the span of roughly three weeks, the Wilson County community, in partnership with members of the county’s Democratic Party, came together to relieve local students of their lunch debt.
“It wasn’t difficult. It’s a good cause,” said Joni Cochran, a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives.
It was Cochran who came up with the idea to pay off students’ lunch debt before the end of this school year.
“You can’t go wrong helping kids succeed,” Cochran said on Tuesday, May 14.
Nearly $6,000 were raised in the community and will go towards ‘Zone 5’ schools, including Lebanon High School, Tucker’s Crossroads Elementary, and Barry Tatum Academy. Additionally, every senior in the school district had their lunch debts paid, relieving them of a consequential burden.
“In this process…we also discovered that seniors can’t graduate if they have lunch debt,” Cochran explained. “There should be nothing around their necks, no albatross, no stones…whatever you want to call it. We shouldn’t do that to them! My gosh, they’ve worked hard to get there and this should be one of those go out and conquer the world moment for them.”
While this campaign was led by county Democrats, Cochran made clear they welcome and encourage Republican involvement in this effort. Numbers indicate it is a pressing problem statewide.
“Tennessee has over $51 million in student lunch debt, and there’s over 285,000 food-insecure students in the State of Tennessee,” detailed Miranda King, interim chair of the Wilson County Democratic Party. “That’s numbers coming from the Tennessee Education Data center.”
King said Wilson County still has about $30,000 left in school lunch debt. In neighboring counties, that number is more than tripled.
“We know from speaking with our neighboring counties’ nutrition departments, Sumner County and Rutherford County, those counties have hundreds of thousands of dollars of school debt,” said King.
With those numbers in mind, the campaign has no intention of stopping.
“We are looking forward to pushing forward with this,” said King. “We’ll continue to raise money every month and (we) actually have several people that have already set up recurring donations for this specific lunch-debt campaign, so we’re excited about it.”
