This month, the principal at Linda Tutt High School in the small town of Sanger, Texas, said he was approached by an eighth grader eager to say he had bought a men’s three-in-one shampoo, conditioner and liquid soap.
“The first thing he did was say, ‘Hey. Look at my hair,'” recalled the director, Anthony Love, in an interview on Tuesday.
“And then I looked at it and it looked clean,” said Love. “But he was excited about it because it was the first time that he had his own shampoo.”
The student, who lives with his mother and sister, said he avoided using the shampoo because of the smell, Love said.
But he finally got his own shampoo, in addition to food, at a new student-run grocery store on the school campus, where students can buy food and other essentials, without money.
“It makes you reflect on yourself and some of the things we think are right, and it helps you put life in perspective,” said Love of meeting the students.
The store, which opened in November, offers canned goods, agricultural products, laundry detergent, soap and other products free of charge to students and teachers in the school district and to the 9,000 residents of Sanger, some 50 miles north of Dallas.
Considered the first of its kind at a high school, the on-site store was the brainchild of Paul Juarez, executive director of First Refuge Ministries, one of the operation’s sponsors. Juarez, whose non-profit organization offers medical, dental, mental health and free food assistance, worked in the food market for about 20 years. That’s where he got his first job as a clerk at the age of 16.
“If we can make our food pantries look like a supermarket” and give people a card to shop as they would anywhere else, Juarez said, then “we can maintain dignity in people.”
Juarez’s idea came to life with a donation from Texas Health Resources, which identified Sanger as an area with food insecurity.
About 43% of students in the Independent School District of Sanger are considered economically disadvantaged. Some 2,750 students are enrolled in the school district, 3.6 percent of whom are considered homeless, Love said.
“That was before Covid happened,” he said. “So, I can only imagine that that number is much higher.”
The store is open three days a week for students and district staff and on Tuesday nights for the rest of the community.
Instead of cash, customers use points. All students earn points based on the size of their families. A small family – with three or less people in the house – receives 40 points, and a large family with six or more people receives 65 points. The bigger the family, the more points. Points are replenished every week.
Grocery items cost one to three points.
“They can buy a lot of items with these points,” said Love.
Students can earn more points through positive employee recommendations for “exceptional” performance in the classroom or in the school building, Love said. Students can also earn points through work on campus, such as in the school garden or as mentors or assistants.
Love said the school requires students to apply for jobs to gain real-world experience and learn responsibility.
“There is a job application that they need to fill out. They need to have two references. They need to keep passing grades, ”he said.
Juarez said the points system is designed to prevent anyone from feeling embarrassed about needing help.
“It will not embarrass them that they have to – from time to time – go to a food pantry,” he said.
The school also partnered with the Albertsons grocery store to open the store, which is run entirely by students who stock up on shelves, maintain inventory, check customers and pack groceries. The store employs five students, including three store managers.
One of the managers, Preston Westbrook, an 11th grader at Linda Tutt High School, said the work has been rewarding.
“It makes me feel better that they are feeling good and not having the struggles of life trying to figure out where they are going to get their food or money to be able to do that,” Westbrook told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth.
Juarez said that part of the $ 300,000 in grant money was used to hire a counselor and a nurse, as well as a resource researcher who meets with parents at First Refuge Ministries in Sanger and helps them navigate how to obtain resources from they need.
Some people online they criticized the store’s points payment system for exchanging the necessary help for good deeds. Love said that some people asked about the points system. His answer, he said, is: No one is sent away.
“If someone needs something, I will go above and beyond myself,” he said. “And I would even deliver groceries to their home if I needed to.”
Those who criticize the program do not understand it, said Juarez.
“Everyone gets points,” said Juarez. “If you don’t want to use your points, you can donate your points.”
Love said he was “very intentional and strategic” in requiring students to go to the supermarket.
“If everyone is doing this, remove the embarrassment,” he said.
Juarez said he spoke with school officials in other states, including California, Delaware, North Carolina and Oregon, who want to take the approach to address food insecurity and that he offered his help because he wants it to take off.
“If the school district can be that important, we can change a community,” he said. “And if we can change a community, we can change an area. And then, if we change an area, we can change the state ”. If we can change the state, we can change the country. If we can change the country, we can change the world. “