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This article was republished with permission from WTOP’s news partner InsideNoVa.com. Sign up for InsideNoVa.com’s free email subscription today. Prince William public schools on Nov. 6 celebrated the launch of a pilot food pantry program bringing pantries to 10 schools across the county. The pilot program, constructed in collaboration with the Prince William County Community Foundation, Capital Area Food Bank and the C.H.O.W. Wagon, officially launched last month. School division leaders gathered at C.D. Hylton High School near Woodbridge for a ribbon-cutting to formally usher in the program. “Having a food pantry in our school is so amazing because it allows us, really, to better serve our students and families,” said Hylton Principal Cassandra Crawford. “It reduces the barriers to accessibility and supports our families in times of great need.” Food pantries are now available to Prince William students and their families at: C.D. Hylton High School Unity Reed High School Lake Ridge Middle School Enterprise Elementary School Occoquan Elementary School Sudley Elementary School Ronald Reagan Middle School Minnieville Elementary School Parkside Middle School Mullen Elementary School The pantries are managed primarily by school parent liaisons and are stocked monthly with non-perishable food items based on inventory and the needs of the school population. The items in Hylton’s pantry include canned goods, rice, fruit cups, cereal, pasta noodles and Thanksgiving meal supplies such as pie crusts, pumpkin puree and boxed stuffing. Food insecurity Recent statistics show Prince William County is the leading county in the D.C. region region for food insecurity, said Vanessa Gattis, the president and CEO of the Prince William County Community Foundation and the C.H.O.W Wagon. “We have an issue here in Prince William County with food insecurity, so our goal is to help eradicate hunger here in our community,” Gattis said. Superintendent LaTanya McDade spoke Thursday about the need for the school division to educate the “whole child.” “We can’t educate our children if their basic needs aren’t met,” McDade said. “This is critically important, because we cannot deliver on the promise of education if students are not prepared physically, emotionally, socially and mentally to be educated.” The goal over the next year is to add five more food pantries to the program, said Gattis and Dawn Davis, the school division’s director of community outreach, business partnerships and philanthropy. A waitlist has already formed of schools looking to join. “We are already in talks with those schools to first identify space within their schools,” Davis said, adding they have already secured space in five schools. Ultimately, Davis said, they’re looking to install a food pantry in every school in the county. In order to expand the program districtwide and make it sustainable, Davis said, they will be relying on community-based organizations and business partners to support food security and the food pantries. Currently, the pantries receive food deliveries on a monthly basis. The pantries are stocked with food purchased at a discount from the Capital Area Food Bank and food purchased using donations from other partnering organizations, Gattis said. The pilot program is funded largely through donations from various partners, including Amazon, which provided funding to purchase all the shelving and equipment needed to build the pantries and the engineers who came and built them. While each school’s pantry is set up differently and run based on the needs of the student population, each school is tracking who’s coming in and utilizing the food. At Hylton, the food pantry can be found through the front office. It is kept locked throughout the day, so students and families looking to use it need to coordinate with the school parent liaison or counselor to use. During Thursday’s ceremony, McDade detailed a conversation she had with school principals about “when the SNAP benefits didn’t load” and the need to pay extra attention to students. “No one’s going to come to you and say ‘I’m hungry,’ so we just have to make sure that they have access,” McDade said. “And this is an opportunity to do that so people don’t have to come and raise their hand.” SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is a federally funded program that distributes food stamps to low-income households. SNAP benefits were recently affected by the ongoing federal government shutdown, causing many families to receive only portions of the usual benefits they receive. While the school division’s food pantry program has been in the making for a year, Davis said it’s all the more important now given the federal government shutdown and its impacts on SNAP. “This was a project from 2024 – so this has been an ongoing project. The timing of it is just, I call it divine, for it to happen at the time. But this need is not new, it’s not unique,” Davis said. The hope, Gattis said, is for this program to be a model used in other school divisions across Virginia. “This is just a start for what can be possible across the DMV, across the state of Virginia, across the U.S.,” Gattis said. “Prince William County Public Schools is the model.”
