Families whose children attend Klukwan School are going home this week with extra food to help carry them through the weekends.
The new weekend food program was designed to respond to parents who learned in the last few weeks that their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funds would be cut off in November due to the ongoing federal shutdown.
“We need to support our kids through the weekend,” said program coordinator Clara Natonabah. “Some people would say that’s not our responsibility. But, in Klukwan, we believe in tribal values and that means that we care about each other and we love each other and we support each other. And, as educators, we know that if kids are hungry, they are not going to come in on Monday ready to learn.”
Natonabah, who has a preschool aged child who attends the Klukwan school, said the school launched the program quickly after a parent started getting messages about November food assistance being delayed.
That parent, Tanisha Willard-Wilson, pulled up the messages she got from the state’s Department of Health Tuesday afternoon saying that SNAP benefits for November are suspended. Normally, she’d be getting the funds by Saturday.
Inside Willard-Wilson’s apartment, her three young children worked the rest of the day’s energy out as she talked through her limited options. The 35-year-old has three children: Kyle, 7, Caleb, 4, and Cassie, 2.
A car accident when she was an infant left her with a traumatic brain injury and a disability that makes it difficult to work to bring in enough income to feed them – so she relies on food assistance for help.
“I’m stressed. I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I know millions of other people are losing their SNAP too, but I’m just thinking about my kids. What am I going to feed my kids?”
She approached the Chilkoot Indian Association for food aid, which she said will take a week to kick in.
Meanwhile Klukwan School’s new food program is helping to bridge the gap.
Natonabah said the school sent out forms this week asking if families want to opt in to the program or if they can donate food to help other families. Those donations are already coming in and Natonabah said the plan is to divide them up into bags to send home with the kids.
To avoid the stigma that can come with needing food aid, Natonabah said when a family opts into the program, she’ll call the kids in one at a time throughout the school day and stash the bags in their backpacks before sending them back to class.
“Nobody has to know,” she said.
This week, the Willard-Wilsons already got one bag. It included cereal, microwaveable soup, some mac-and-cheese, and a nod to Halloween with a sweet treat for the kids.
For people who want to donate to the school’s new program, Natonabah essentially said to think of what you’d like to feed your kids and then buy extra.
“The vibe is weekend foods, you know? So, if you give a kid a can of soup, that’s great for the mom, but with that let’s also put a bag of goldfish or something the kids can easily reach and grab and feed themselves. Then maybe some bread or cereal, whatever else we can do to make it to dinner,” she said.
She said emailing her at [email protected] is the best way to coordinate donations.
The Willard-Wilsons are among the 3.2 percent of borough residents who rely on SNAP assistance each month. But the program sees widespread use throughout the country with roughly one in eight people receiving an average of just under $200 a month.
SNAP is costly, but the program has a large reserve and the Department of Agriculture could use those funds to prevent benefits cuts, however federal officials said Friday they would not draw on those emergency funds to do so.
More than two dozen states sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its refusal to fund the program during the government shutdown as it puts roughly 42 million low-income recipients at risk of hunger and financial hardship. They argue that the federal government is legally required to maintain funding for the program.
As those arguments are unfolding at the national level, Natonabah said she feels lucky, and grateful, to be living in a place like the Chilkat Valley and working at the Klukwan School.
“I’m living here and raising my family here and there are so many people who want to help and are honest about when they need help, so going straight into action and getting into work is just part of how we do things,” she said. “I’m very humbled by this experience and I feel good about where we are going as a school and confident that our families will get what they need as long as we keep talking to each other.”