Reanna Van Dyke and her family moved to San Diego from Texas. She said the move came with some sticker shock.
“A Little Caesars pizza here is $11.47,” she said. "In Texas, it was $6.”
Van Dyke supervises recess and lunch at Hancock Elementary School. Her husband is in the Navy.
"This school community has been there for us through lots of different hardships,” she said.
Now, the school has another way to support them: a food pantry. Hancock Elementary is one of the latest schools in San Diego County to get one. Feeding San Diego has a waitlist for these pantries.
Wednesday marked its second food distribution. Nearly 150 families received watermelons, pears, peppers, Cheerios and more.
“It wasn't just a bunch of canned goods thrown in a bag,” Van Dyke said. “That's usually what we end up finding at different food resources throughout San Diego. This time, it was great because it was a mix of things that kids actually eat and want to eat.”
Nearly all of the students at Hancock Elementary have a parent in the military. Abi Avila, the school’s community school site coordinator, said they surveyed families about their needs two years ago.
“We found that a lot of our families found food security to be difficult,” she said. “They wanted more snacks in the classroom and they wanted food resources for them to use at home.”
Military members’ housing allowance counts as income when applying for CalFresh. Advocates with the San Diego Hunger Coalition have called for it to be exempt from income so that more military families can access that benefit.
Hancock isn’t the only school looking for ways to help feed students at home. Feeding San Diego now distributes food at 44 schools in the county, and more than 30 others are on the waitlist — eight have applied in the last two months alone.
Feeding San Diego staff say school pantries can reduce the stigma of seeking food assistance by bringing it to a familiar, trusted place.
“For a lot of families, it's already on their day-to-day path,” said Chase Eckman, who manages the school pantry program. “It makes the food a lot more accessible.”
A Feeding San Diego spokesperson said it costs about $30,000 to run a school pantry for a year. They’d need more than $670,000 each year to take the remaining schools off the waitlist.
