WILMINGTON, Ohio – An Ohio middle school canned a lunch lady after she gave away food to students who couldn’t afford it, including her grandkids, and later paid for the meals out of her own paycheck.

Denver Place Elementary School lunch lady Debbie Solsman told WXIX students often came through the lunch line without enough money in their accounts, and she would either buy them lunch out of her own pocket or write out an IOU and stash it in the cashier’s drawer.

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She said she would later pay off the IOUs when she received her paycheck.

“I sometimes would buy (hungry students) an extra slice of pizza because I did feel them out, ask them what they had for supper the night before,” Solsman said. “Sometimes they would tell me nothing.”

Some of those kids were her own grandkids, Solsman admits, while others were students with past due accounts who were required by district policy to eat cheese sandwiches until their parents paid up.

In February, the Wilmington City School District fired Solsman, an employee since 2003, for “Failure to account for food sales at (her) cashier job in the cafeteria and providing food without payment to (her) grandchildren.”

“I did wrong, I broke the rule, it was my fault, I just felt like termination was a harsh punishment,” Solsman told WLWT.

“It’s been really hard for me,” she said. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

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Parents are livid.

“I’ve got her calling me … like it’s cheese sandwich time,” mother Danielle Davis said. “A kid can’t get through the day on a cheese sandwich.”

“Firing her over feeding kids, that’s a no-go,” said another mother, Serenity Mitchell. “And our community is going to come together.”

Wilmington superintendent Ron Sexton said it’s unfair that the district looks like a big meanie for firing such a compassionate lunch lady.

“For people to make the district out as heartless to kids’ needs is the hardest part,” he said. “We care a great deal about our employees, we care a great deal about the students.”

Sexton couldn’t tell WLWT what, if anything, Solsman’s black market free lunch program cost the school district.

“I want those kids to know that I miss them,” Solsman said with tears streaming down her face, “and that I love them very much.”

Solsman told WXIX that despite losing her job and benefits, she doesn’t regret helping out hungry students and would do it again.