November 10, 2007 in Voices

Time again to fill the bus

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With any luck, some Spokane Valley middle school students will be seeing frozen turkeys by the bus load.

The students from the Central Valley School District are participating in the annual Fill the Bus Food Drive next Saturday to help feed nearly 800 families for the holidays. Each school will park a school bus outside grocery stores and encourage patrons to help fill the bus with donations that will help fill the food bank shelves at Spokane Valley Partners.

“We wouldn’t have Thanksgiving without it,” said Barbara Bennett, food bank director. She added that the number of families signed up for food during this time is usually between 600 to 700, but rising grocery and gas prices have made that number jump up this year.

“That means a lot of extra food to collect,” she said.

Last year students and staff collected 17,000 pounds of food and $822 to add to the food bank’s supply. Students sometimes turn it into a competition to see which school can collect the most, and after the drive students will head over to the food bank and start stocking shelves, Bennett said.

Turkeys are usually the hardest to get, but the food bank will need lots of other types of food, like sides and desserts, to make a holiday dinner complete for a family, she said.

Horizon Middle School collected the most turkeys last year – 32 – and the students have already started to prepare for this year’s drive.

“It was amazing. The community is so generous,” said Shelley Moffit, the school’s athletic director. Moffit, who also teaches eighth-grade humanities, has been organizing the food drive with Horizon’s eighth-grade students for the last three or four years. The eighth-grade classes run the food drive as apart of their service learning requirements for social studies.

“We are ready to roll,” Moffit said. Each year, students start collecting for the food drive at the school’s volleyball tournament. The entry fee for each player is a food donation. Next week is an all-school food drive.

Moffit said students enjoy the camaraderie and the competition of the drive, but are also driven by their desire to help needy families.

“Ultimately, it’s about the spirit of the season,” she said.

The students at Bowdish Middle School will also be collecting food at school next week in preparation for the drive. Last year, the school collected the most cash donations and 24 turkeys.

Principal Dave Bouge said he thinks it is important to give students an opportunity to contribute to their community.

“It lets the community see that kids these days are not all like the ones they see on TV,” he said. “There’s some wonderful kids out there that want to give back to the community.”

Bouge is glad to be involved. On Saturday, he’ll be ready to haul the food away. But not in the bus, of course.

“I would like to drive it,” he said. “But I don’t think they’ll let me.”

Donations are also being accepted at Spokane Valley Partners from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and next Saturday.

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