A holiday event serving homeless children in Brockton, Massachusetts, has been canceled due to financial challenges, school committee members say.
Over the years, Brockton's Dinner for Champions grew so much that it moved from Brockton High School in 2018 to Lombardo's Event Center in 2022 — and to Gillette Stadium last year.
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"It started off with 100 families and it just grown to close to 1,000," said Brockton School Committee Vice Chair Tony Rodrigues.
The event gave hundreds of toys and meals to students and families in need.
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"It's not happening this year due to the fact that some of the vendors that sponsor this event — and also the lead person in this, who has been one of our vendors — hasn't been paid for services rendered to the city, specifically with the school department," said Rodrigues. "The money is there. The school department is not the one who writes the checks, the POs come into the school district and it's forwarded to City Hall, specifically to the auditor department, so they are the ones that actually cut the check and there's some issues with contracts and having the mayor's signature on there, and they are holding off until all this is fixed, but you can't stop things from happening, specifically in education, because you don't have a signature."
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During the School Committee Finance Subcommittee meeting on Dec. 3, Rodrigues said the unpaid invoices impacted student services.
"We have four kids that can't make it to school because payments have stopped — homeless kids," said Rodrigues. "I don't know how anybody can sleep at night knowing that you are not paying services."
Asked about these claims, Mayor Robert Sullivan said, "I don’t believe that's accurate," noting he is not involved with planning the event and did not decide to cancel it.
"All I can tell you, again, is that I've signed what's been given to me — purchase orders, placement agreements," said Sullivan, deferring questions to Brockton Public Schools' superintendent and communications department.
NBC10 Boston requested an interview Thursday with Superintendent Priya Tahiliani Thursday, but did not receive a response.
Brockton School Committee member Ana Oliver brought up the Dinner of Champions cancellation during Tuesday's committee meeting.
"To find out that this year it was not being held was very heartbreaking and disservice to the homeless community. When I attended last year at Gillette Stadium, it literally broke my heart how many the population of homeless students that we have in the city of Brockton, and the ability of the vendors and donors that put that together," said Oliver. "I know the situation we are dealing with about payments, but I wish the vendors had reached out to us, that we could have worked with them, because it would have been a really great event for our students."
Sullivan has received dozens of toy donations from local UPS workers that he said Thursday will be distributed to children throughout the city.
"My hope is that we can repivot and get it going again next year," Sullivan said. "But there are going to be a lot of Brockton Public School kids — and I'm the mayor of everybody, not just BPS kids, although I'm a proud graduate — we're going to have a lot of toys for people in need this year."
