School defends firing an employee, who fed hungry kids, and the story goes viral. Officials from the Dakota Valley Elementary School claimed that they fired Della Curry, the school kitchen manager, not because she fed hungry kids, but because she failed to follow their policies numerous times in the past.
School defends firing a manager, who fed hungry children by saying loud and clear: “There are no hungry kids at our school.” Della Curry has been making headlines for the past week after she was fired from the Dakota Valley Elementary School in Aurora, Colorado.
Curry told anyone who would listen that she lost her job as the school’s kitchen manager because she was caught on numerous occasions feeding hungry students, who did not have money to buy lunch or did not bring a snack from home.
Curry said she was fully aware that she was violating school policies, but she did not care because she wanted to help. Della Curry, a married mom of two, (a 7-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son), said:
“I had a first grader in front of me crying that she doesn’t have enough money for lunch. Yes, I gave her lunch. … I’ll own that I broke the law. The law needs to change.”
Curry confessed that between 2014 and 2015 she gave out about 20 hot lunches to children, who didn’t qualify for a free lunch. According to Curry, an angry co-worker told her boss what she was doing, and she was fired from her post. She added:
“I knew the whole time it was a firing offense. Somebody told my supervisors what I had done, and it is immediate termination. I will take that if we can change the rules.”
Tustin Amole, a spokesperson for Cherry Creek School District, is defending the district’s actions in firing the 35-year-old woman by saying, “We feed every child,” and adding:
“It has nothing to do with her giving free food to hungry kids?”
Amole claimed that Curry was canned because she violated the policies during the one year she worked at the school. Amole explained:
“The law does not require the school district to provide a meal to children who have forgotten their lunch money — that is a district decision. According to our practice, we provide hot meals to students the first three times they forget their lunch money and charge their parents’ accounts. The fourth time, we provide a cheese sandwich and milk. No child is ever allowed to go without lunch.”
What are your thoughts on the Della Curry controversy?
