(BRANDON) Students who may be facing food insecurity at home or simply need a helping hand now don’t have to leave their high school campus for basic needs. Brandon High School has recently opened both food and clothing pantries on their campus. These pantries provide food, clothing, supplies and hygiene products to homeless students and low-income families.
Brandon High School became a community school in August 2022. Ever since then, teachers have striven to create more than just a center for education, but a place that serves the community by helping students in every aspect of their lives, thus setting them up for a future of success. This was a big part of the motivation behind the food pantry- which opened up in 2023 -and the clothing pantry, which began its operations earlier this year.
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Feeding Tampa Bay donates to the school’s food pantry every two weeks. The organization also gave the pantry refrigerators and freezers so it can store more perishable items, such as fruits, vegetables, and meats. Lauren Leto is the community resource teacher at Brandon High School and head of the school’s new food and clothing pantries. “I always was the teacher that had the things, and the kids knew that if I had extra snacks or I had extra of anything, it was going to be at a certain spot in the classroom,” She said.
Shortly after the creation of the food pantry last year, Leto came to the realization that Brandon High students were in desperate need of more than just food. Many students could not afford backpacks, or even basic school supplies. This led her to build a second pantry on campus, a clothing pantry, one that focuses on distributing clothing, as well as school and hygiene supplies to needy students. Students have affectionately nicknamed the pantry “the general store.”
All donations to the clothing pantry come from teachers and faculty, students, or alumni who have heard about the program. Student volunteer, Patience Nicholson, said that they strive to make sure everybody feels welcome to use the pantries.
“We make sure that the parents who come are well taken care of when they do come get things here,” said Nicholson, “we want them to come and feel safe and comfortable.”
While both pantries have only been operating together for a few months, they have already had a substantial impact on the students of Brandon High. Students access one or both pantries on an almost daily basis. Leto said that while she unfortunately could not open the pantry to families as often as normal last month due to the back-to-back hurricanes in the state, they saw over 90 families in just two days.
“I think the food pantry is very helpful for people who don’t have that kind of money and supplies that they need.” Said new Brandon High student, Sylis Santiago. “Brandon is really good at offering it [help].”
While her current priority is the students, Leto says that she hopes to one day get the pantries to a point where they can also serve the greater community. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can donate to the Brandon High School pantries, you can visit their website or contact Lauren Leto at Lauren.Leto@hcps.net.