Former Cafeteria Manager Sentenced For Stealing Student Lunch Money

May 6, 2016

A former elementary school cafeteria manager has been sentenced to probation after being charged with stealing lunch money from student accounts at Molino Park and Jim Allen elementary schools.

Jennifer Leigh McKendrick, 42, was arrested for felony official misconduct and grand theft. She pleaded no contest to the charges against her. Judge Jennie Kinsey withheld adjudication in sentencing McKendrick to three years supervised probation. She will also be required to make restitution and pay $518 in court costs.

Officials said she was improperly refunding money from student lunch accounts and pocketed the cash.

McKendrick was first hired by the Escambia County School District in late 1997. In August 2013, she was promoted to food service manager at Molino Park Elementary School and was given the additional duty of supervising food service operations at Jim Allen Elementary in August 2014. Part of her duties included issuing refunds from student meal accounts.

In May 2015,  a Molino Park parent found that his children’s online lunch accounts has an incorrect zero balance. When he called the cafeteria to question the balance, he was told the money was refunded in March 2015. The victim told investigators that he never requested and never received a refund.  He was contacted three different times by McKendrick who offered to meet him off campus and refund the money, according to authorities.

McKendrick admitted that she removed money from the food service cashier kiosk at both Molino Park and Jim Allen elementary schools without completing the appropriate paperwork, according to an arrest warrant. She contacted a school district investigator and volunteered to reimburse the school district for any funds determined to be missing.

She resigned from her position on June 2, 2015.

A total of $2,787.75 of was wrongly removed from the school district’s food service funds, according to an internal audit.

Comments

6 Responses to “Former Cafeteria Manager Sentenced For Stealing Student Lunch Money”

  1. anne on May 7th, 2016 2:01 pm

    How does one just throw away their career like that? Especially after receiving a promotion? This is a whole new world we are living in, I swear.

  2. Kidd on May 6th, 2016 10:02 pm

    If she had been adjudicated guilty a she wouldn’t be able to seal her record or expunge it. Since the judge withheld adjudication she can clean her record and receive gainful employment. This another way that the judicial system can pick and choose who is stunned for life and who’s not!

  3. nod on May 6th, 2016 3:07 pm

    she stole kids lunch money and didn’t get any jail time. Poor kids.

  4. dm on May 6th, 2016 12:51 pm

    $2,787.75

    How many kids could have been fed with that much money ?

  5. Good Grief on May 6th, 2016 7:38 am

    WOW! A slap on the hand…bad girl.
    No wonder people don’t think twice about being a criminal.

  6. Bill on May 6th, 2016 7:07 am

    Caught just when you thought it was ok to steal they got you now you knew what you did was wrong

Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News