BY ANDY GARDNER
North Country This Week

MASSENA — The Massena Central School District will get $50,000 to become a food hub, and they’re looking at creating a district food pantry at J.W. Leary Junior High.

Community Schools Director Kristin Collarusso-Martin discussed the two developments with the Board of Education during their Thursday, Jan. 14 meeting.

“We found out that we received the full award of $50,000 from No Kid Hungry to become a nutrition hub. This is a really interesting grant because what I understand is that corporate donors select projects that they want to support,” she said. “So some corporate donor decided that Massena Central becoming a nutrition hub looked like a great project that they wanted to fund.”

The grant will go from January to December, which Collarusso-Martin noted will include two school years.

She added that they’re “working on taking a deep dive into our food access programs,” and planning to coordinate with “Salvation Army, St. Peter’s Outreach and the Massena Neighborhood center “to figure out where the gaps are in food security.”

One of their goals, Collarusso-Martin said, will be to increase participation in the USDA lunch program and in the free/reduced meal program for next year.

For the food pantry, Junior High Principal Amanda Zullo said she thinks that school is the prime location because of its proximity to the high school, Nightengale Elementary and Trinity Catholic School.

“This seemed like a natural fit for the building, and for a lot of the work we’ve been focused on doing this year,” she told the Board of Education.

Colarusso-Martin said some high school students are coming to school hungry, but they don’t have the afterschool snack program running because of the pandemic.

“We can’t have the after-school snack program this year because we can’t have after-school programming thanks to COVID,” she said.

“Pending board approval, our application is ready to go,” Collarusso-Martin said. They will apply to be registered through the Food Bank of Central New York. The nearest registered school food pantry is in Harrisville, she added.

The community schools director said the designation through the CNY food bank would “make us eligible … for additional federal funds, as well as foundation funding.”