A Catholic parish in Maryland has paid the outstanding school lunch debt for every public school in its county, hoping to ease the burden on families struggling financially.
St Katharine Drexel Parish, in Frederick, Maryland, has long worked with local churches and other organisations to provide food for people in need. During the school year, the groups supply weekend meals to children who receive free or reduced-price school lunches.
As the 2025–26 school year came to an end, however, parishioners at St Katharine Drexel undertook an even larger initiative, paying off the outstanding school lunch debt for the entire Frederick County Public Schools system at a cost of US$11,800.
“Our hope was to lift a burden from families who are having a difficult time making ends meet,” Brian McCrohan, pastoral associate at St Katharine Drexel, told the Catholic Review, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
“The economy hasn’t been great and inflation has been awful. This was just something that our community could do for our neighbours and the county.”
More than 48,000 students attend one of Frederick County Public Schools' 70 schools. Around 37 per cent are eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches.
According to the Catholic Review, parishioners donated the funds to pay off the lunch debt, while families who already supported the parish's weekend meals programme also contributed.
“We have parishioners who are very generous in supporting that outreach to our community,” McCrohan said. “Our social justice ministry is obviously involved in a number of different outreaches to the local community, as well as nationally and internationally.”
This is the second time St Katharine Drexel Parish has cleared school lunch debt. The first came in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, when parishioners likewise donated the necessary funds.
Paying off school lunch debt is “a wonderful way to live out our faith”, McCrohan told the Catholic Review.
He said it remains undecided whether the parish will make a similar donation at the end of future school years, though it may work alongside other local churches to help eliminate school lunch debt.
McCrohan added that he hoped the parish's example would encourage others to support their own communities.
“It feels weird to blow a trumpet about it. The thing that we recognized, though, is there’s a lot of bad news that is in front of us all time, and it is nice for people to hear the good things also, inspiring people to do what they can, whether as an individual or as a parish community,” he said.
