Expanded backpack program
Kentucky School Advocate
February 2017
By Matt McCarty
Staff writer
Washington County Schools is in its fourth year in the non-traditional instruction day program. When bad weather is expected, the district includes extra food in its backpack feeding program for students.
“They do try to stay ahead of the storm and try to be more proactive in the sense that they send additional bags of food home with the students when they can,” said Cherry Boyles, Washington County’s director of instruction and NTI coordinator.
During multiple-day closures, if buses can’t run but roads are safe enough for family resource center staff to travel, “we’ve even had times when, because of the length of the storm, it gets to the point where our FRYSC staff can travel – the roads are OK for them but we can’t have buses running – we’ve had some times when they’ve done some home visits and provided additional food to families,” Boyles said.
The food for the backpack program comes from community and church donations to the local FRYSC office.
“As we’ve talked about all the considerations with an NTI program, this, of course, is one,” she said. “You have children who their families depend on the food supports that come from the schools and so that’s just one of the ways that we try to respond to that.”