Local youth group donates $824.76 to clear student negative lunch balances

Ella Bettner, founder of the student charity No Tummy Left Behind, presented a donation of $824.76 to Faribault Public Schools on Aug. 18 to eliminate negative lunch account balances accrued during the 2024–25 school year.

At the Faribault Public Schools board meeting, the board chair thanked Bettner and said her “thoughtfulness, compassion and commitment to helping others represent the very best of our school community.” Bettner told the board she started her charity “to help fight food insecurities in school,” and said the contribution was intended to both relieve families’ unpaid meal balances and to signal to students “that someone cares about them even if they don’t know who I am.”

Bettner noted that while state policy now covers standard school lunches, additional purchases such as second meals can still create negative balances. The donation was presented during the board’s recognition segment and the district arranged a photo with board members to acknowledge the gift.

No formal board action approving or accepting this specific donation was recorded in the meeting minutes; the contribution was presented as a recognition/thank-you item. The district’s school meals policy and the board may handle bookkeeping for cleared balances through regular administrative processes.

Ella Bettner — identified at the meeting as the charity’s founder — encouraged other young people to notice problems and act, saying, “You don’t have to wait … you just have to notice the problem and care enough to do something about it no matter how big or small.”

The presentation was part of a longer meeting that included program reports and board business; the district did not specify in the meeting how many accounts or which schools’ balances were cleared beyond the general description that the donation paid off negative lunch balances from the 2024–25 school year.