Lowcountry Food Bank at CCSD's Stall High Addresses Illegal Immigration

In case you wondered what a "staple" is, here's the relevant definition from dictionary.com: "a basic or necessary item of food: She bought flour, sugar, salt, and other staples."

That the Lowcountry Food Bank set up a pantry filled with staples at Charleston County School District's Stall High in North Charleston suggests an interesting intersection of poverty and law. "'We understand that some students struggle with food insecurity, and we really cannot bear the thought of them going home for the weekend and perhaps going to an empty cupboard,' Lowcountry Food Bank CEO Pat Walker said at a grand opening ceremony Thursday. 'So we wanted to partner with you to make sure that those students you teach every day ... have the nutrition that they need to do that.'"

"Since opening on Oct. 20, the Food Bank reports that the pantry has served 25 families and distributed more than 1,200 pounds of food."

Would you like to comment? 

About 75 percent of students at Stall are eligible for free or reduced-fee breakfast, lunch, and after-school snacks. That's over a thousand students, yet only 25 families need staples. Even if each family had four students, it's still a smidgen of poverty at the school.

Don't get me wrong: I'm glad the pantry is there for those who need it. 

"Rachel Allison, child hunger programs coordinator for the Lowcountry Food Bank, said she works closely with Erica Schmitt, Stall's bilingual family services advocate, to provide healthy options that students will actually eat. 'If she says rice and beans, we're going to bring rice and beans. If she says fruit, we're going to bring fruit,' Allison said."

You were assuming these were black families, but those don't need a "bilingual family services advocate." 

Makes you wonder if any of the 25 families are black. Probably so, but what are the chances that the majority are Hispanic? And why do they need staples? Could it just possibly be that many of those families live off the grid as illegal aliens?

Naaah.

Yes, there are those parents who swap Food Stamps for drugs or gambling, but then another contingent comes from a much larger problem: illegal immigration. Its effects reach into every corner of our lives.

Kudos to the late "Elizabeth B. O'Connor, a local woman who requested that her estate be used to alleviate hunger," who has made the In-School Pantry possible.

Something tells me this particular cause of hunger never even occurred to her.