Seattle Schools Community Forum

Locally (and thanks to reader Carolyn), news from Real Change newspaper about getting food to needy students for the weekends.  While the kids of John Hay Elementary School play outside, LaRock carries bags of food into classrooms and surreptitiously slips them into the backpacks of 15 kids at the 500-student school on Queen Anne Hill. Each bag contains cans of soup, crackers, tuna, granola bars and fresh fruit. There’s enough food to get a student through the next two days: two breakfasts, two lunches, three dinners and snacks.  Administrators slip the food into backpacks when students are outside of the classroom to avoid stigmatizing the students receiving the help. So anti-hunger nonprofits decided to stop relying on parents to get the food from the food bank and instead bring it directly to the kids to take home.  The Queen Anne Helpline and the West Seattle Food Bank launched their programs in November at a handful of neighborhood schools, and hope t...