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Sloatsburger Darrell L. Frasier Pays Forward An Act of Kindness This Holiday Season … And Hopes You Join Him

Posted on 11 December 2019 by Editor

Small acts of kindness, especially around the holiday and new year season, is a way to contribute to the local community and pay forward goodwill and kindness.

Sloatsburger Darrell L. Frasier put a down payment on Sloatsburg Elementary School student debt this week, inspired by the recent Suffern Police Department DARE  program effort, which paid off some $1500 of school lunch debt at R.P. Connor Elementary School in Suffern.

Frasier delivered a check to Sloatsburg Elementary School principal Dr. William Castellane on Tuesday to help pay down student lunchroom debt, and hopes his act of kindness pays it forward for others to act. The act also drew social media praise for Frasier’s act.

“I knew that Sloatsburg Elementary had a lunch deficit with the Suffern Central School District,” Frasier said. “I went to meet with the Principal to present a check to bring down the balance, with the hope to inspire more people to help out,” he said.

Frasier, who is chair of the Sloatsburg Revitalization Committee and sits on the village Zoning Board of Appeals, was acting as a private citizen. If the full lunch room debt isn’t paid down by the new year, Frasier said he hopes to then work with the school to pay down the balance.

School lunch debt is often an invisible issue but weighs heavily on those burdened by it, often younger kids. Many families depend on that school lunch to provide a meal to their children. Often, keeping up with the small cost of that regular hot meal can itself be overwhelming.

Individual schools in the Suffern Central School District don’t know which students might owe lunch money to the school as the district central offices notify parents of any issues with their accounts.

According to Diane Serratore in The Journal News article on the SPD giving, executive director of People to People, Rockland’s largest food pantry, food insecurity is a big issue in the county. Susan Meyers, director of the Sloatsburg Food Pantry, has repeatedly stressed that food insecurity in the school district regularly drives people through the food pantry door, especially during the holiday season.

“The fact is there are too many kids in Rockland who are food insecure,” Serratore said. A 2017 study by Feeding America, a nationwide network of 200 foodbanks, put the foodinsecurity rate for Rockland, overall, at 8.9%, and for children at 17.8%. “That’s a very high level,” Serratore said.

Like the Suffern Police paying down RP Connor lunch debt, Frasier hopes other Sloatsburgers give this holiday season and help pay off Sloatsburg Elementary School’s student lunch debt.

“If they give,” he said, “we’ll be able to easily pay off the balance.”

 

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