Businesses step up so kids get enough

Several local businesses came together to arrange for weekend snacks and meals for certain local kids who might otherwise go hungrier over the weekend.

A Second Harvest van rolled up to Lake Roosevelt Elementary School Thursday with about a month's worth of supplies for feeding 55 kids who can use a little extra help on the weekends.

The delivery was the start of Second Harvest's Bite2Go program that partners up local donors with school staff who know which students would seem to benefit from it.

Jenna Engeland, in her second year of teaching third grade at LR, had seen the program work when she was in high school. Seeing its impact made an impression, and she wanted to get it started here.

"So many of ... my fellow peers were, like, going home on the weekend and not having food to eat," she recalled from her high school years when she helped pack those meals. "The sheer amount of ... bags that I was packing really just ... made me think about that."

Engeland had done her student teaching at a school that also had the program in place, but then discovered it didn't exist at the school in Coulee Dam where she started her career. "Now that I was a teacher, I was seeing it in my kids, too, and so I really wanted to make something happen," she said.

That involves sponsors, so Engeland contacted Jerri Smith, the manager at the Grand Coulee branch of Wheatland Bank.

Smith said she started contacting other businesses.

"It was a great response," she said. "Every business that I did reach out to was ... like, 'Heck, yeah, this is a great thing to do.'"

It can be hard to prioritize learning math skills when you're hungry. "They come back to school on Monday and, you know, it can affect their learning skills ... if they've been hungry all weekend," Smith noted.

Smith said several businesses pledged and co-sponsored the Bite2Go program with enough funding to provide weekend snacks to kids in need over the entire 2025-2026 school year. They include Wheatland Bank, Jess Ford, Loepp Furniture, Harvest Foods, Grand Coulee Center Lodge, and Trail West Motel.

Smith said the cost of the support for the entire school year for 50-60 kids is about $10,000.

Julie Myklebust, with Second Harvest, said the "teachers and counselors identify the students, and they discreetly put the bag of food in the child's backpack." at the end of the week. 

The school board last month also authorized providing weekend meals for students. District Superintendent Rod Broadnax said the Bite2Go program will just mean certain children will get a little extra.