Thank You

Most of you probably know that I teach in a school with a high percentage of economically disadvantaged students. I think our free lunch rate is around 95%. In the four years I have been at this school I have seen one student bring lunch money. We feed the majority of our students breakfast and lunch. A few students even get dinner two nights a week. Families can buy school uniforms through our school for around $5. Cheap. Families that cannot afford uniforms are often given uniforms. This goes for shoes, coats, gloves and hats as well.

For the most part I have no problem with the help that is given to some of these families. I really believe that the majority of the parents I work with are doing their best to provide for their families and the help we give them is really appreciated. There are other families I struggle with. It doesn't matter how much we give them - it is never enough. If these parents hear about school uniforms given to other kids they are in the office asking where their free uniforms are. Every Christmas these parents come in asking to be part of "Sub for Santa" or to qualify for any other holiday help we have. (Strangely enough these are the same kids who are driven to school in expensive cars, have every new video game/DVD they want and wear better clothes than I do on non-uniform days. Weird huh?)

This past week I gave backpacks to four of my students who didn't have one. (These backpacks were donated to the school by a member of the community.) This morning one of these students handed me an envelope. I've been collecting money for school pictures and book orders so I didn't think anything of it at the time. When I finally looked in the envelope I found $10 and these two notes

Guess which type of family this kid belongs to? I'm even going to return the $10.