In a burst of holiday spirit, Carl’s Building Supply has helped pay off school lunch debt for each school district in East Jefferson County and for some schools on the west side of the county as well.

The total debt paid off equaled about $5,200 across five school districts, said Tom Rider, president of Carl’s Building Supply. The donations cleared the debt specifically for all students on the Free and Reduced lunch program.

“We have a lot of low income families here,” said Tami Thompson, who runs the food service finances at Quilcene Schools. “We let everybody eat. We never turn anyone away.”

Even if kids don’t have the money to pay for lunch that day, they still receive a lunch. But the cost goes onto their account as a debt.

“A lot of the time, the debt accrues a bit more quickly than parents expect,” he said. “The total can end up being a big amount.”

The idea to pay off student lunch debt was inspired by Richard Sherman, former Seattle Seahawks footballer who paid off $20,000 worth of lunch debt for students in the Tacoma School District, as well as helping cover debt for students in Santa Clara, California, where he now plays for the 49ers.

“At the end of the year we started talking about what we could do to make an impact in our community,” Rider said. “We sat down for lunch and were brainstorming what we’d like to do and it was just after we had read about Richard Sherman paying off all the school lunch debt for Tacoma schools.”

Talking with Carl’s CEO Lawrence Johnson and managers of the store, Rider got the go-ahead to look into paying off school lunch debt in Port Townsend and Chimacum school districts.

“I just started calling the schools,” he said. “At Chimacum, they said they had begun feeling like debt collectors.”

At Port Townsend High School—even after Carl’s cleared the debt for all the Free and Reduced Lunch programs with a donation of $1,570 and another anonymous donor gave $2,100—the school lunch debt is still between $4-5,000, Polm said.

When Rider realized lunch debt was such a large issue in the county and that it was doable for Carl’s to pay off the debts of students on the Free and Reduced program, he started calling up some of the other schools in the county as well.

“We just kept rolling with it,” he said. He called up Quilcene, Brinnon and the Quillayute Valley School District on the west side of the county. He drove out there to drop off a check to help pay off some of the elementary school’s lunch debt.

“At some schools, if someone has a balance when they graduate, they don’t get their diploma,” he said.

In Quilcene, the debt paid off totalled $461, Thompson said.

“Usually the parents will eventually pay off the debt,” she said. “But donations ease parents’ minds at this time of year and maybe they’ll have a bit more to spend on gifts for their kids.”

Thompson said they also get other donors throughout the year, such as Josh Drake who has a collection can at his log yard in Quilcene and donates the money to pay off the school’s lunch debt.

In Brinnon, the smallest of the schools, the total amount of lunch debt to pay off was $196, said superintendent Patricia Beathard.

“They didn’t have any budget constraints, they asked us what debt we had and then said they’d pay it all off,” she said. “Especially around Christmas time, it’s hard for parents to have this extra bill hanging over their heads.”

Giving back to the community is important for Carl’s Building Supply, Rider said. The business has been locally owned and operated since it was started by Carl Johnson in 1947. Carl eventually passed on the business to his son, Lawrence Johnson. Recently, Carl’s won the 2019 President’s Award Winner from Western Building Material Association.

For teachers at the schools in Jefferson County, the donation towards school lunch debt was even more special knowing that some of their students eventually went on to work at Carl’s.

“It was great when Carl’s called up,” Thompson said. “One of our former students, Sean Hames, is store manager there and always makes sure to think of us.”

Donors like Carl’s make it easier for schools to manage their lunch programs, Beathard said. Schools aren’t debt collectors and don’t want to have to hound parents to pay their bills, she said, especially when a family might be struggling financially.

“What a generous company,” Beathard said. “Wonderful, big-hearted people.”