Hope students share hearts, help food bank

SANDPOINT — Over 609 pounds of food were donated to the Clark Fork/Hope Food Bank last week thanks to Hope Elementary’s  "Share Your Heart and Restock the Shelves" food drive.

The school runs the food drive this time of year as a service project to their community to help offset the shortage many food banks face after the holiday season, Lake Pend Oreille School District officials said.

“Doing it this time of year ties directly into our positive behavior model of PAWS: Problem solve, Act safely, Wise choices, Share your heart,” Cindy Kiebert, librarian and a paraprofessional at Hope Elementary, said.

Kiebert has coordinated the food drive for the last several years. She and her accelerated math students delivered the food on Valentine’s Day with the help of their bus driver.

The drive also serves as a math lesson for the sixth-grade accelerated math students and a competition for the rest of the school. Each day during the drive sixth-grade math students count donations and log their data on a large graph in the hallway for other students to see which classes are bringing in the most donations. The winning class is determined by the most items "per capita," or per student, to allow the smaller classes the ability to compete against the classes with more students.

“All together our classes [kindergarten through sixth grade] brought in 915 food or toiletry items,” Kiebert said. “According to the food bank, we delivered 609 lbs. of food. Pretty good for a student body of 111.”

Hope Elementary’s second-grade class won the competition among the classrooms with 232 items donated by their 17 students, and the fourth and fifth-grade classes followed closely behind with 268 items.

    Hope students take the food they collected during the school's annual food drive out to a waiting school bus so that it can get to those in need.
  

    Hope students pose with some of the food they collected during the school's annual food drive.