Jean's Pantry News
from SFUSD School Spotlight.Student-run pantry brings neighborhood change
On a Tuesday afternoon, boxes at the Food Bank’s San Francisco Community School neighborhood pantry are filled with apples, potatoes, carrots, onions, cartons of low-fat milk, and macaroni and cheese along with one-pound bags of rice and pinto beans. Pantry volunteers have set up metal folding tables and now wait restlessly for 3:00 p.m.
When the first pantry client arrives the volunteer staff springs to life. Anthony, 13, carefully lays two gleaming acorn squash into an elderly woman’s plastic-lined shopping cart. Cece and Jah Queen drop in handfuls of carrots, three big onions and generous scoops of Brussels sprouts. At the next station Alonzo “Ozzie” Pippenger helps pantry patrons choose from five different kinds of bread.
“A man came in late last week and was sad because we didn’t have much food left,” Ozzie says. “I asked him how much he wanted and he said, ‘all of it.’ So I gave him all we had left. I guess he really needed it.”
Welcome to one of the newest and most unusual of the San Francisco Food Bank’s 178 neighborhood food pantries. The pantry at the San Francisco Community School is run by 26 middle school students who are part of the Third Base After School Program, a project of the Cesar Chavez Service Club. They’ve named their pantry Jean’s Free Grocery and Pantry, in memory of a teacher who passed away last year.
“The pantry is part of the community now,” Howard Swansey says about the student-run pantry.
“It gives these kids some respect. People are interacting with them as people, not as kids. They’re really into this.”
Swansey is head counselor and outreach coordinator at San Francisco Community School, at the corner of Excelsior and London Streets a few blocks east of Mission Street. He says he was inspired to set up the school-based pantry after visiting the Food Bank’s Healthy Children Pantry at Bret Harte Elementary School.
“I walked in there and said, ‘I want to do what they’re doing.’ ” But unlike Bret Harte, which is run by parent volunteers and adults from the surrounding community, this one is run by the students. At the beginning, a lot of people – including Swansey – were skeptical that it could work.
“They like doing this,” he says as the pantry activities continue, supervised by five adult afterschool staff. “And now other kids from the school want to join.”
The students served 60 people on opening day in October, 80 the second week, and more than a hundred the third week. “I didn’t expect so many people to know about this,” says Ozzie as he hands out more bread.
In appreciation for the food she receives, one woman from the neighborhood hands Ozzie a bag of school supplies for the students – crayons, a ream of paper, pencils and pens.
“I like giving out food,” Anthony says as he fills a bag with apples for an elderly neighborhood woman. “I can talk to people and meet people I haven’t met before. Then every time they come back, they know my name and I know their name.”
Small School News
School Board Notes 5.22.07
By Nicole Achs Freeling
GreatSchools.net Correspondent
District Names First "Small Schools"
The first two schools to participate in the district's small schools initiative will be San Francisco Community School (a K–8 school) and June Jordan High School, Interim Superintendent Gwen Chan announced at the school board meeting Tuesday night. Several schools had applied for the program, said Chan. The selected schools will have more site autonomy, different governance structures, and different evaluation and budgeting procedures from other schools in the district, in an effort to allow them to develop as models of small schools by design. The small schools program seeks to foster student achievement through limiting schools size and offering more customized instruction.
SF Chronicle-March 1, 2007: Board of Education OKs new department, 5 small schools
SF Chronicle -January 24, 2007 Board of Education may enlarge small-school program in district
SF Chronicle - New policy will give small S.F. schools flexibility
The San Francisco school board unanimously passed a comprehensive small schools policy Tuesday evening, giving such schools wide-ranging academic and financial freedom to teach students.
SF Weekly - May 3, 2006 A Study in Size
Three years ago, San Francisco launched an experiment with a new kind of school. It worked. So why isn't the district pursuing it?
March 20, 2006
Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal
Sonnenschein's San Francisco office is partnering with the San Francisco Community School, a small and truly innovative teacher-run kindergarten through eighth grade school in the Excelsior district, whose students represent the ethnic and socio-economic diversity of San Francisco.
Lawyers and staff throughout the office have been volunteering at weekly after-school tutoring sessions in middle school Math and English, assisting parents with monthly "Home-Cooked" breakfast and lunch meals, working with the Parent Action Committee to organize fundraising events, and developing a student sponsorship program for the Project Outdoor Learning Experience (Project OLE) camping trips.
Sonnenschein San Francisco has donated school supplies, computer equipment and funds towards Project OLE and the "Home-Cooked" meal programs. Attorneys and staff have attended school open house and garden cleanup events and donate funds to the school through in-office fundraising projects.
Planned future activities include providing assistance for the development and implementation of a sustainable technology plan for San Francisco Community School. We will coordinate additional tutoring programs, participate in fieldtrips and educational events, and work with the school and other organizations to develop a long-term breakfast and lunch program.