FCCLA is opening a school food pantry, and it will not duplicate Lord’s Cupboard
Griswold’s FCCLA chapter is a few weeks from opening a food pantry in the junior-senior high. Seth Lembke said advisor Katie Frederickson has been working grants, and one of them covers a place at school for students who need more than the cafeteria provides.
The room already has a history. It has been a teachers’ lounge, the athletic director’s office, and the Tiger Closet, where extra clothes are kept for students who need them. The clothes stay. The pantry goes in beside them. Frederickson and a couple of other people are cleaning it out now.
Friday backpack meals for some elementary students are already running. Lembke said the same small group of community people has been doing that work, and they would like help. The school pantry is meant to add hands, not replace what is already in town.
“We’re not going to work to step on toes, because we already have the Lord’s Cupboard food pantry in town,” he said. FCCLA will work with Amy Smith and the Cupboard’s existing program. “There’s no point in duplicating efforts. We’re all shooting for the same thing, and that’s to make sure kiddos and families get fed.”
His line for why it belongs in a school: “Hungry kids don’t learn.” Food insecurity is not widespread in Griswold, he said. It still exists.
Details are still being set. The pantry will sit in the junior-senior high, not a separate building. Lembke said he wants to hear Frederickson’s plan as it firms up over the next few weeks.
The same morning was count day. Enrollment lives in the district’s JMC system, not a clipboard in the hallway. Lembke put the district generally at 410 to 420 students and reminded listeners that open-enrolled students make the math more than a head count. A second count comes in mid-January. Funding still arrives a year behind.
Questions on the pantry: Griswold Community School District, 712-778-2152.
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