Grant Wood School’s program fills students’ backpacks and stomachs

Macaroni and cheese, granola bars and applesauce.

It's just food to most people, but for some students at Grant Wood Elementary School it's the difference between a full or empty stomach.

The school recently launched its backpack program, providing backpacks of food for students to have when school isn't in session. Kerri Leu, the school facilitator, said the program stemmed from a parent's concern.

“We had a parent come to us, a new parent in our district, who said she had no idea how many kids in our community are hungry,” Leu said.

Nearly 45 percent of the Cedar Rapids school district's students qualify for the free or reduced-price lunch program, an increase from 38.4 percent five years earlier. In the elementary schools, half of the students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

“If families have trouble affording food during the week, when students get a hot meal at school, the weekends are even tougher,” Leu said.

Working with Grant Wood parents, the school decided to follow in the footsteps of other district schools, including Garfield, Polk, Pierce and Taylor, sending backpacks filled with food home with students every Friday. The empty bags are returned on Monday.

The bags are filled every Friday by Grant Wood staff, parents or volunteers from First Lutheran Church.

The goal is to send a student home with enough food to last them the weekend so they return to school Monday ready to learn. An anonymous donation of several thousand dollars gave Grant Wood funding to launch its backpack program. Leu said the money should last the remainder of the 2010-11 school year.

“They get their hot lunch Monday through Friday, and then they have some food over the weekend,” Marge Bode, a First Lutheran Church volunteer said.

About 30 Grant Wood students receive backpacks on Friday. The bags are numbered, leaving the process anonymous and protecting the students from their peers' questions.

“Iowa has a big percentage of families living in poverty, throughout the state,” said Linda Palmer, a volunteer with First Lutheran Church. Palmer works with Grant Wood second graders once a week. She helps other women in her church fill the backpacks one Friday morning a month. “We need to break the cycle.”

One way to do that is education, but research shows that hungry children have poorer mental and overall health, miss more days of school, and are less prepared to learn when they are in school. Palmer said the backpacks are one way to show the students at Grant Wood that people care.

“They are important to us, they are important to our future,” she said.