No student left hungry — Pasco elementary collecting cereal to feed kids during spring break
A six-foot-tall stack of cereal boxes greets visitors to Emerson Elementary School in Pasco.
Each box represents a week of breakfast for students who might not have enough to eat when school is out for spring break.
“Many of our kids worry about spring break,” Emerson Principal Brooke Schuldheisz said. “It’s not fun for them, because they’re thinking ‘how am I going to eat breakfast and lunch each day?’ ”
The students at Emerson are not alone. About 17,000 kids in Benton and Franklin counties had limited or uncertain access to food in 2014, the hunger-relief organization Feeding America said.
Many of the students rely on school programs to get regular meals.
At the Pasco school, roughly 95 percent of the students qualified for free or reduced lunches during the 2015-16 school year. To qualify for reduced cost lunches through the U.S. Department of Agriculture program, a family of four needs to earn less than $3,747 per month.
Staff at the school do what they can to help the children. They regularly stock a food pantry. Each day, every student can take two items from the shelves that they can prepare on their own.
On Tuesday, the three open-sided shelving units which comprise the pantry were nearly empty.
When the kids see this full, their eyes light up. For our kids who worry about where they’re going to get their next meal, this gives them a little bit of peace and lets them concentrate a little bit better in school.
Emerson Principal Brooke Schuldheisz
Schuldheisz said the pantry was full a week ago.
“When the kids see this full, their eyes light up,” she said. “For our kids who worry about where they’re going to get their next meal, this gives them a little bit of peace and lets them concentrate a little bit better in school.”
Staff and community members were concerned about what will happen to the children when they leave class for the week. Schuldheisz borrowed an idea from a church group that donates cereal to a Kennewick school for students to take home during winter break.
“It was such a blessing for the kiddos and their families, and I thought how can we make this work at Emerson,” she said.
The principal, in her second year at Emerson, brought the idea to the teachers.
“The teachers were very excited about it, and bought in ... we decided this would be our kickoff year,” she said.
When they started spreading the word, teachers, community members and others started donating boxes, and within days they collected about 350 boxes of cereal.
The school received support from churches, community members and fellow students at McLoughlin Middle School.
There’s only six boxes of Cocoa Puffs.
Emerson Elementary School student
“I can’t believe how many boxes we have out there,” she said. “My in-laws picked it up today and they had the entire back of their truck full of boxes.”
They still need to collect about 310 more boxes to send one home with each student. Several teachers volunteered to contribute boxes if they aren’t able to collect enough of them.
People looking to help the Emerson students can bring boxes of cereal to the school at 1616 West Octave Street between 7:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. until 10 a.m. on Friday.
School staff revealed the stack to students earlier in the week, and at least one student already knew which box he wanted.
Worried he might not be able to get a box, he told the principal, “There’s only six boxes of Cocoa Puffs.”
Cameron Probert: 509-582-1402, @cameroncprobert
This story was originally published March 28, 2017 at 7:19 PM with the headline "No student left hungry — Pasco elementary collecting cereal to feed kids during spring break."