Mary Stark Elementary School in Mandan is setting up a food pantry through the Great Plains Food Bank’s school pantry program, part of a bevy of efforts at the school to help students from low-income families stay focused on learning.
Principal Chad Radke said there's a bit of a learning curve figuring out how the Great Plains Food Bank system works, but the school hopes to distribute food by the Thanksgiving holiday. Once operational, the pantry will be open before and after school every week on Wednesday.
Radke is focused on getting high-quality food for "his families" -- not just quick and cheap foods such as ramen noodles and canned tuna.
“I would love to give frozen turkeys or chickens away, or loaves of bread or spaghetti noodles,” Radke said.
A federal community schools grant is providing $10,000 for Mary Stark to purchase food from Great Plains Food Bank this year. A different pool of grant money enabled the school to purchase a standing freezer and build shelving for the pantry to go along with a chest freezer and food scale donated by Great Plains.
Some of the food from Great Plains is free, but certain types of food must be paid for in order to keep afloat the food distribution program that feeds 36,000 children across the state every year.
With the pantry located at a school, the idea is that families can pick up healthy food items from a place they already frequent. It's part of a push to make Mandan Public Schools a one-stop shop.
“So instead of meeting with families and saying, you have to go to this agency to fill out SNAP (food stamps), and you have to go to this agency to get a food basket, and you have to go to this agency (to receive other services), we're going to try to put as many of those things as we can in our school’s campus," said Laura Just, social worker for Mandan Public Schools.
One example: Kids can even receive dental services at Mary Stark Elementary thanks to a partnership with the Ronald McDonald Mobile Dental program.
Allowing families to remain anonymous about participating in the pantry program is important to both food bank and school officials, who don't want anyone to feel stigmatized or disrespected.
“We tell them there's nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be embarrassed about -- and we hope nobody is -- but at the same time that’s easier said than done," food bank spokesman Jared Slinde said.
The school decided to put the pantry in a portable classroom so parents don't even have to come through the front office.
“People can just kind of come in and nobody knows who’s coming and going,” Just said.
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The school doesn't ask for much financial information, either.
"Basically what we need is how many adults, how many seniors, and how many kids are in the homes that are receiving the food," Just said.
The goal is to build relationships with parents so that social workers like Just can assist families further, directing them to other programs.
“Healthy families have healthy kids that are ready to come to school and learn,” Just said.
The school pantry program at Mary Stark is one of three new Great Plains childhood hunger feeding sites in the Bismarck-Mandan area this year, and the only new site in Mandan.
Sixty-six percent of students enrolled at Mary Stark last year came from low-income families.
"This year, 78% of our student population is living below the poverty line,” Just said.
With such a high percentage of low-income families, Mary Stark Elementary is eligible for a Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which manages the school meal program. The CEP classification allows every child at Mary Stark to eat breakfast and lunch at school for free, regardless of income.
“We want to make sure each and every child gets fed, because we know that by feeding them, it's increasing their learning,” said Becky Heinert, child nutrition program director for Mandan Public Schools.
Heinert isn't involved with the pantry at Mary Stark, but she knows how important regular meals are for students.
"By getting a nutritious meal, they can learn better, learn faster, and they're more apt to have the attention to learn," she said.
Radke wholeheartedly agrees.
"It's important for kids to come to school with a full tummy," he said.
