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This month, principal of high school Linda Tutt in the small town of Sanger, Texas, said he was approached by an eighth grader who was eager to share that he bought a shampoo, conditioner and a three-in-one shower gel for men.
“The first thing he did was say, ‘Hey. Look in my hair, “” remembers director Anthony Love in an interview on Tuesday.
“And so I looked at it, and it looked clean,” Love said. “But he was excited about it because it was the first time he had his own shampoo.”
The student, who lives with his mother and sister, said he avoided using their shampoo because of the smell, Love said.
But he was eventually able to get his own shampoo, as well as food, at a new student-run grocery store on the school campus where students can buy food and other basic items, without money. .
“It makes you think about yourself and some of the things we take for granted, and it helps you put life in perspective,” Love said of the student meetup.
The store, which opened in November, offers free canned goods, products, laundry detergent, soap and other products to students and faculty in the school district and to the 9,000 residents of Sanger, about 50 miles north of Dallas.
Deemed to be the first of its kind in a high school, the on-site store was the brainchild of Paul Juarez, executive director of First Refuge Ministries, one of the sponsors of the operation. Juarez, whose non-profit organization provides free medical, dental, mental health and nutritional advice, has worked in the grocery industry for about 20 years. It was there that he got his first job as a parcel clerk at 16.
“If we can make our pantries look like a grocery store” and give people a card to shop like they would any other place, Juarez said, then “we can keep the dignity. at people’s Place”.
The idea for Juarez came about with a grant from Texas Health Resources, which identified Sanger as a food insecure area.
About 43% of students in the Sanger Independent School District are considered economically disadvantaged. About 2,750 students are enrolled in the school district, 3.6 percent of whom are considered homeless, Love said.
“It was before Covid arrived,” he says. “So I can only imagine that number is much higher.”
The store is open three days a week to students and district employees and Tuesday evenings to the rest of the community.
Instead of cash, buyers use points. All students get points based on their family size. A small family – with three or fewer people in the household – gets 40 points, and a large family of six or more gets 65 points. The bigger the family, the more points there are. Points are renewed weekly.
Items in the grocery store cost one to three points.
“They are able to buy a lot of items with these points,” Love said.
Students can earn more points for positive recommendations from staff members for “outstanding” performance in the classroom or around the school building, Love said. Students can also earn points through jobs on campus, such as in the school garden or as mentors or assistants.
Love said the school requires students to apply for the jobs to gain real-world experience and learn responsibility.
“There is a job application that they have to fill out. They have to have two references. They have to keep the passing marks,” he said.
Juarez said the points system is aimed at preventing anyone from feeling embarrassed about needing help.
“It won’t bother them having to – every now and then – go to a pantry,” he said.
The high school also partnered with grocery company Albertsons to open the store, which is run entirely by students who stock shelves, maintain inventory, check customers and pack groceries. The store employs five students, including three store managers.
One of the principals, Preston Westbrook, an 11th student at Linda Tutt High School, said the work had been rewarding.
“It does me good that they feel good and that they don’t have a hard time trying to figure out where they’re going to get their food or the money to be able to do it,” Westbrook told NBC Dallas- Fort Worth.
Juarez said a portion of the $ 300,000 in grants was used to hire a counselor and nurse, as well as a resource navigator who meets with parents at First Refuge Ministries in Sanger and helps them find the resources they have. need.
Some people online criticized the store’s points-of-use payment system for trading needed help for good deeds. Love said some people have asked about the point system. His response, he said, is: no one is turned away.
“If anyone needs anything, I’ll go beyond myself,” he says. “And I would even deliver groceries to them if I needed to.
Anyone who criticizes the program doesn’t understand it, Juarez said.
“Everyone wins points,” Juarez said. “If you don’t want to use your points, you can donate your points.”
Love said he was “very intentional and strategic” in forcing students to go through the grocery store.
“If everyone does it, it takes away the embarrassment,” he said.
Juarez said he spoke to school officials from other states, including California, Delaware, North Carolina and Oregon, who wanted to follow the approach to tackle food insecurity and who ‘he had offered to help because he wanted her to take off.
“If the school district can be so big like that, we can change a community,” he said. “And if we can change a community, we can change an area. And then, if we change an area, we can change the state.” If we can change the state, we can change the country. If we can change the country, we can change the world. “
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