ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Several school districts in the Rochester area have food pantries for students and families, and they’re already preparing in anticipation of families losing access to SNAP benefits this weekend.
To be clear, SNAP benefits do not fund school pantries. But students whose families rely on SNAP may not have enough food at home after this weekend. If that happens, students may turn to school pantries for food reliance.
Sebrone Johnson, CEO of EDceptional who works directly with Rochester-area charter schools, says they’ve already started to reallocate money to stock their pantries.
“And it’s not really a scenario of if they can do it, they must do it,” Johnson said. “Because what we’re looking at in terms of this food insecurity issue is that concentration of students will be affected. Academic performance will be affected because it’s really difficult to focus on classroom activities with growling stomachs.”
School budgets are set during the prior school year, so mid-year changes require administrators to divert funds from other programs to support the pantries. Johnson said those decisions are at the discretion of each school.
“The problem is there’s no such thing as an unlimited budget. And so, because there may be a need to feed children, then you may have to take dollars away from out-of-school programs,” said Johnson. “You may have to take dollars away from that teacher-coach that you had on for the rest of the year. You may have to take dollars away from that additional teacher-assistant that was in the classroom.”
The Rochester City School District also spoke about its preparation. Officials say they’re already working on a plan to expand pantries to all schools in the district by 2028.
The government shutdown and potential SNAP loss expedited that plan. Now, the district’s main focus is stocking pantries already in place if students need to rely on them until SNAP access returns.
I have reached out to a couple other districts including Gates-Chili and Rush-Henrietta, but haven’t heard back.
For more information about your school district’s food pantry, visit your district’s website.
Local school districts prepare food pantries in anticipation of families losing access to SNAP WHEC.com.
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