Teenager uses her candle business to clear a middle school's lunch debt

Ruby Chalupka, a junior at McCallum High School in Texas, runs a homemade candle business called Lunchline Candles. She used its money to pay $254, which cleared the lunch debt at Lamar Middle School. The story was reported by KXAN and carried by NewsNation in December 2025. Ruby set up the business to support meals for children, so paying off a school's debt fits the reason she started it. The clean-up sits alongside a wider problem: school lunch debt is a recurring issue in many districts. The original KXAN report includes her own account of the payment.