The backpacks might contain a full box of macaroni and cheese, a jar of peanut butter and jelly, a loaf of bread, a milk card good for a gallon, some snack items, and pieces of fruit. They are going home on Fridays with about 15 students at each of three local school districts: Guilderland, Voorheesville, and Berne-Knox-Westerlo.

Jeff Vivenzio, principal of Voorheesville Elementary School and the coordinator of that district’s program, said that he thinks the program, which started last year, has had a very positive effect for the students involved, “in terms of allowing them to feel confident that they will have enough support through the weekend.”

The idea is to get the food straight into the hands of young people, said Betsy Dickson of the Regional Food Bank, which supplies the food.

“The backpack program was a way to access kids where they are. They’re not required to get to a local church or pantry to get food. Kids don’t always have the means or the transportation to get to a food pantry,” Dickson said.

The backpacks are generic-looking, she said, noting that she tells students that, if anyone asks, they can say it’s sports equipment or that the teacher gave them extra homework.

Kids are sometimes frank in telling their classmates why they have an extra backpack, Dickson said. “Kids are more open-minded than we give them credit for. It’s not necessarily this big secret,” she said.

She looks for basic items that “people will know what to do with, no matter their walk of life,” she said, and for “things that are good at filling bellies and don’t require a ton of extra items.”

The most complicated items the Food Bank gives out, in terms of preparation required, are macaroni and cheese or Rice-A-Roni, she said. When these items go to younger children, she said, “Our hope is that there is an older sibling or an adult there to help.”

Most items will not require any prep, she said. “Kids might not have a lot of support, and we don’t want them to have to prepare.”

Food is being shared with the entire family, Dickson said. The Regional Food Bank did a survey a few years ago, because it wanted to find out if the bags were too heavy and if the items were actually being eaten.

One question was whether children are sharing the food with family or eating it alone. “I’d say over 98 percent said they share it with the entire house,” she said.

From that point, the organization stopped giving out single servings of the items and switched over to full-sized boxes, Dickson said.

The cost of supplying one student with weekend food for a year is $183, Dickson said. The cost of funding an entire school’s program for 15 students for a year is $2,745.

Anyone wishing to donate to a particular school’s program can do it by contacting the Regional Food Bank and specifying the school, Dickson said, noting that, in that case, “100 percent of the funds will go to that school.” Donors can also contact a school’s program coordinators directly.

At Guilderland

Guilderland’s program benefits two different populations: the recipient students and also the members of the School-to-Work program — kids with intellectual and/or physical disabilities who are in charge of stocking the pantry shelves, sorting the items and doing inventory, and filling the backpacks.

This provides the School-to-Work students with valuable experience, said program director and business teacher Joan McGrath, and also gives them a sense of purpose in coming to school, since they now feel that they are directly contributing to the happiness of other students.

McGrath runs the backpack program at Guilderland High School, together with social worker Heidi Cutler.

Guilderland’s program started in April and ran through the end of the school year. (See related letter to the editor.) All of the students served are at the high school.

It will start up again on Oct. 6 and run through the middle of June.

The Guilderland Food Pantry supplements the food from the Regional Food Bank, with foods donated to it by the community. The Regional Food Bank is very structured, “and we must follow the guidelines they set and pack the bags with exactly the items they supply each week,” McGrath explained. The donations from the Guilderland Food Pantry help ensure that teenagers with large appetites won’t go hungry, she said.

The program runs with layers and layers of confidentiality, McGrath and Cutler explained. For instance, they themselves don’t know if any recipient students are receiving free or reduced-price lunches, because that information is not accessible to them even as school staff members, and they do not know if the students’ families use the services of the Guilderland Food Pantry, since the food pantry and the backpack program do not share their lists of recipients with one another.

Because of the coding system, none of the School-to-Work students know who the recipients are, and they don’t ask to know; they are just happy to help, McGrath said. They are not the ones to hand over the backpacks, she said; staff members are.

There doesn’t seem to be any problem for the students who receive the backpacks, McGrath said, in terms of other students asking why they have two backpacks. “A lot of our students at the high school carry multiple bags for multiple reasons throughout the day, including physical-education bags, computer bags, lunch bags.” Some never use their lockers at all, and so have a lot to carry, she said.

McGrath also advises the Investing Club, and its student members have been working hard, she said, to find economically priced grab-and-go snack-food items at area wholesalers that they will sell, as a fundraiser for the backpack program, at the high school’s upcoming open house on Thursday, Sept. 28 at 6:30 p.m.

At the open house, the Investing Club will also solicit monetary donations for the backpack program. Like the students in the School-to-Work program, members of the Investing Club are “excited to be helping out,” McGrath said.

McGrath and Cutler don’t meet regularly with the students who receive the backpacks, and don’t ask for any feedback. “There was one parent who emailed us to ask for a different pickup location, and we did that,” Cutler said.

“We know from them signing up again that it’s useful for them,” Cutler said.

At BKW

Colleen Demuth retired over a year ago as the school nurse at BKW’s elementary school, but she continues to coordinate the school’s backpack program.

“It’s been a wonderful program. For as long as I’m able to, I’m happy to help with it,” she said.

The program launched four or five years ago. Demuth used to distribute the bags on Fridays, but the new school nurse hands them out now.

If other children ask any questions, Demuth might tell them only, “It’s a special program we have going on,” without explaining further, she said.

Early on, a large donation from an anonymous donor helped keep the program afloat for a couple of years; then, when funds were running low, the Albany County Sheriff’s Office stepped in to fund the program for a year, Demuth said.

Currently, BKW’s backpack program receives donations from churches, the Kiwanis, community members, fire departments and auxiliaries, and school staff members.

“In the next year or so, we’ll have to brainstorm about how to bring in funds, maybe have some kind of event,” Demuth said.  

At Voorheesville

Voorheesville’s program, which serves students in kindergarten through 12th grade, started last year, Vivenzio said.

Vivenzio created the program together with then-Assistant Superintendent James Franchini. The two of them had heard of the program and, after Vivenzio looked into it further, decided that it was a good fit for the district.

Last year, the three principals — of the elementary, middle, and high schools — combined their discretionary funds to support it.

At the end of last year, Vivenzio said, the principals asked the Parent-Teacher Association for support for this year, and received it.

“One thing that’s very important to us is to try to stay as discreet as possible. I think our families don’t want to be known,” Vivenzio said.

Other programs

Guilderland Elementary School has a completely separate weekend-food program that has been running for the past three years; this year will be its fourth year. Run by school nurse Mary Zwagerman, the program serves between four and 15 elementary-school students each year and is based out of the Schenectady City Mission.

Initially, this program provided only nonperishable foods, but last year the mission began to work together with the Regional Food Bank and now is able also to provide bread and fresh fruit, Zwagerman said.

“We try to keep it very confidential,” Zwagerman said, and the way it works is that several staff members each take responsibility for one or two students. Food comes in on Thursday, and on Friday the teachers go to the lockers of the students they are assigned and place a bag of food inside the students’ backpacks.

Principal Allan Lockwood said, “Our population of economically disadvantaged students  has tripled over the last nine years.” He said the school is fortunate to be able to provide this form of help to these families.

The program at Guilderland Elementary is funded almost entirely by the school’s PTA, Zwagerman said, with occasional supplementary fundraisers.

BKW Secondary School also has its own program, separate from that at the elementary school. Principal Mark Pitterson said that the social worker who had been in charge of it had left this summer to accept a position in a different district, and the new social worker would be taking it over.

Pitterson said the food last year came from the Regional Food Bank through a grant; the school was not paying. He said it served about 16 students.

Demuth of BKW Elementary said she had heard from the social worker who was previously in charge of the program that it was going to be necessary to start to fund-raise soon.