Schools

Darnestown Elementary Helps Provide Holiday Meals For Low Income Families

The school provides Gaithersburg Elementary with Thanksgiving Food Baskets to help low income families who can't afford a big meal during the holiday season.

For many Gaithersburg Elementary School students, the prospect of not having a Thanksgiving meal is very real.

Being a Title I school, 72 percent of students qualify for free or reduced price lunch, Gaithersburg Elementary administrative assistant Rosa Baxter said, adding many of those students struggle to eat on weekends.

But thanks to a longstanding partnership with Darnestown Elementary, many Gaithersburg children will enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner.

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Each holiday season Darnestown Elementary holds a Thanksgiving Food Basket drive helping to provide all the fixings for a Thanksgiving dinner, PTA chairperson Kristen Crook said.

“So many of our families can’t afford to go out and purchase huge Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, so we provide them,” Baxter said. “We make up the boxes with canned goods and we provide a turkey, roasted chicken, or spiral ham.”

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Much of this food is collected at Darnestown Elementary and delivered to Gaithersburg by Crook herself.

Crook said she has developed a soft spot for those children because despite the schools being only seven miles apart, there are extreme differences in resources available to the kids.

“We complain here [in our area], ‘Oh, we’re getting an addition and we don’t have enough room for kids to play in the backyard,’ Crook said. “And I’m thinking, ‘there are kids in Gaithersburg who don’t even eat on the weekends.’”

Along with the food drive, Darnestown Elementary provides warm clothes for the winter, including jackets, gloves and hats. They also hold a back-to-school supply drive at the beginning of the school year and donate healthy snack backpacks for Gaithersburg Elementary students to take home on weekends.

“Darnestown Elementary has always supported us. They’re one of our sister schools.” Baxter said. “Whatever we need, all I have to do is pick up the phone and say, ‘listen, our kids need binders, extra pencils, notebooks, or paper.’ Within a day or two, I have the delivery here.” 

“They are just super-magnificent,” she added.

Micaela Gonzalez, a single mother of a first grader at Gaithersburg, has been a recipient of both the Thanksgiving food basket and winter clothes for her son.

Being a single parent with low income, the help and support from her son’s school and Darnestown are tremendous year round, Gonzalez said in Spanish through Baxter who translated.  

Thanks to both schools, her son has yet to suffer through the cold during harsh winter months, she said. 

Although her son is only 7-years-old, Gonzalez was surprised to see he had an understanding of their situation.

“The other night, he knew the holidays were here,” she said in Spanish through Baxter, “and he said, ‘I’m going to pray to God to help the school.’”


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