A Palmerton Area School District director is turning a spur-of-the-moment quote into an opportunity to help erase delinquent student lunch accounts.

In the midst of a nearly five-hour discussion Wednesday night on whether Palmerton should temporarily transition to a full remote education model and, if so, when a return to a hybrid model should take place, board member Earl Paules rattled off an analogy for the ages.

Paules, a staunch supporter of in-person education for students, used the Palmerton mascot, a Blue Bomber, to support his point of trying to come up with creative solutions to keep students in school as much as possible.

“We’re in a war fighting with a virus,” Paules said during the meeting. “A Bomber, during war, doesn’t land and park itself until the war is over. A Bomber comes out and fights. I’m standing behind you.”

That phrase has made its way onto the back of a shirt that Paules is selling, with proceeds going to the outstanding student lunch fund debt in the district.

“I’m just trying to help some kids in need,” Paules said Monday. “As a district, we’re always taking money from other places to pay the bill and a lot of these kids can’t afford to pay it down, so I thought let’s do something to help.”

The front of the shirts has the Palmerton Blue Bomber logo and the phrase, “Ready For Take Off.” An image of the shirts and order information can be found on the Paules Motorsports Facebook page.

Adult shirts will be $20 for sizes S-XL; and $2 more for 2XL and above. Youth shirts will be $15 for sizes YS-YL.

Paules is asking people who would like a shirt or multiple shirts to comment on the Facebook post or contact him at paulesmotorsports@gmail.com with how many shirts and what sizes they want to order.

Orders can be paid for with PayPal, Venmo or in-person cash option.

“We need to sell around 50 to realistically make it worth it, but I’m hoping to sell 500,” he said. “I’ve had administrators text me already and they’re interested. We just want to help the kids.”

Paules said he didn’t have the quote written down beforehand, but did start giving it some thought the day before the meeting.

“It was off the top of my head the night of the meeting,” he said. “The day before I was watching television and I just started thinking, all summer on the news you’ve heard we’re in a war against the virus. I thought hey we’re the Bombers. It was kind of perfect.”

At the end of Wednesday night’s meeting, Palmerton’s board voted 5-4 to start a full remote model today with the hybrid model, where students attend in-person two days a week, returning on Jan. 4 following winter break. A week before, the board, with the exception of Paules, had voted for a full remote model from Dec. 1 until at least Jan. 25 with Carbon County needing to have, at worse, a moderate level of COVID-19 community transition before returning to the hybrid plan.

“I knew we were probably going to end up virtual in December, but the end of January was just too long to wait to come back,” Paules said. “I knew if we went out that long, we would probably never get back in school this year. I’m hoping after January, we can start talking about getting at least our younger kids back five days.”