New food pantry at Cooper Elementary helps families

BELLA VISTA — The counselors at Cooper Elementary School are managing a new food pantry at the school to assist families.

Counselors Elandrea Dumes and Jalynn Mayo were unloading a new shipment of food on a recent day and shared about the food pantry.

Dumes said Director of Student Support Services Katherine Ellsworth applied for a grant that led to the addition of the food pantry, which began serving families in January. Before January, the school was already benefiting from snack packs — small supplies of nonperishable foods sent home with students over a weekend — supplied by local churches. However, the grant “beefed up” the food supply by providing donations of perishable and nonperishable items from Northwest Arkansas Food Bank, Dumes said.

“The great thing about these is it can provide a family a full meal, and it’s perishables and non-perishables,” Mayo said.

Families who qualify, based on family size and income, may receive food from the pantry once a month. Dumes said families receive a certain number of pounds based on family size. For example, she said, a family of seven received 48 pounds of food. The pantry is now able to provide food for up to 10 families in addition to the snack packs, Mayo said.

The foods distributed vary depending on what the food bank has available but can include items like cereal, canned goods, pasta, rice, beans, milk, eggs, cheese, butter and meat, the counselors said.

“When we get them signed up, they’re very grateful because it takes one more thing off their plate to worry about, especially with the rising cost of groceries,” Dumes said.

Mayo said a few families have been receiving services from other agencies and were maxed out on the aid they could receive. The food pantry at Cooper Elementary allowed them to receive one more helping hand, she said.

“It feels good to know our kiddos aren’t coming to school hungry or without the basic resources and we can expand it to the families and get them what they need,” Dumes said.

“It means a lot to us that we can meet those foundational needs so they can come and learn,” Mayo said. “Their bellies are full and their brains are ready to learn.”

(NWA Democrat-Gazette/Rachel Dickerson) Cooper Elementary School counselors Jalynn Mayo (left) and Elandrea Dumes unpack crates of food from the Northwest Arkansas Food Bank to stock the new food pantry at the school. Ten families of students at the school are now being served by the food pantry.