This fall marked the second school year the Gladstone School District has been eligible for the Community Eligibility Provision, a federal program that allows the district to provide free meals for all students.

It’s also the first semester the Gladstone Food Pantry has been housed back on district grounds, moving into Kraxberger Middle School and reopening in October.

These two avenues allow Gladstone leaders to provide free breakfast and lunch to all 1,500-plus students in the small district near Oregon City, as well as feed hundreds of local residents in need.

The move back into the district couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.

This fall’s federal government shutdown and restrictions on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits led to a flood of people seeking help to fill their kitchen cabinets. In this time of extreme turmoil for many, local schools are functioning as a backup safety net.

Gladstone Superintendent Jeremiah Patterson said, in an ideal situation, a school shouldn’t have to provide so much emergency food assistance. But while the need is there, Gladstone wants to step up.

“Our philosophy has always been that we have a social compact with our community that extends past delivering academic instruction and intramurals,” Patterson said. “We have a place in the community as a gathering spot, as a place of social comfort and social fabric.”

‘How do we make the community aware that this resource exists?’

When the Gladstone Food Pantry first began, it was housed at Gladstone High School. But for the last three years, the nonprofit operated at Hillside Christian Fellowship.

The pantry needed a new home yet again this year when the church was sold to new owners.

Patterson worked over the summer with Northwest Family Services and the Oregon Food Bank to make the three-way partnership possible. They met with school staff, the city manager and the mayor to brainstorm solutions for a new space, later moving to the middle school.

The pantry doesn’t operate during school hours, but Patterson said the students certainly see the comings and goings of deliveries — something he and the Kraxberger principal were excited about.

Soon after the pantry reopened in early October, a wave of neighbors turned to them for help.

Gladstone officials said over a dozen families who had never visited before used their pantry in early November, in addition to the families who already sought weekly support.

They counted 97 households that benefited from the pantry in its first week open at Kraxberger, seven of which were new. The next week, there were 15 new families. By the third week, there were up to 127 households and 23 new families. In the past, officials said the pantry may have seen one or two new patrons in a given week.

Those numbers have gone up and down, as Gladstone area residents simultaneously deal with SNAP cuts and growing fears of ICE arrests.

“My personal philosophy is: Let’s focus on what we can control,” Patterson said, “which is, how we advertise, how do we make the community aware that this resource exists, and where in any of our families are struggling to access it, how can we break down those barriers?”

Sharon Karp started volunteering with the Gladstone pantry 18 months ago. It became an important part of her retirement after 30 years of teaching.

“When I taught, and I’d get really emotional, I would think, ‘I’d love to be a shelf stocker at Safeway,’” she said. “I used to think it’d be such a great job. You didn’t have to have anybody else’s cares and all that.”

Karp now spends up to eight hours a week volunteering at the pantry, mostly ensuring fresh food that arrives is quickly sorted and properly stored. She stocks shelves and breaks down bulk packages into usable quantities for the pantry’s clients.

Some people come by the pantry on foot, she explained. Others place orders in advance and drive to pick them up. The pantry workers deliver food every two weeks to older Oregonians who are unable to leave their homes. They give out myriad necessities — from produce and protein to staples like cooking oil and toilet paper.

“There’s a stigma around coming to a pantry,” Karp said. “Anytime I’ve helped a client … they’re so thankful. And then, they’ll often want to add a reason for why they’re there.

“It kind of defaults to, you know, ‘I’m trying, but I can’t really make it,’” she said.

Karp said the one silver lining of the recent SNAP turmoil is how community members stepped up.

“Donations have been incredible. People really rose to the occasion,” Karp said. “And that is great knowing that, because you don’t really know that on a week-to-week basis, when you work at a food pantry.”

Karp called it the real high point of the turmoil. “Or maybe the only high,” she added.

Seeking hunger-free schools

David Wieland said it’s been hard to watch this “man-made disaster” affect so many people across the state. It’s shed a light on the razor-thin line many walk between putting food on the table — or not.

But food insecurity had been persistent in Oregon long before this fall, explained Wieland, who works as a policy advocate for Partners for Hunger-Free Oregon.

At least one in eight people in Oregon and Southwest Washington faced food insecurity before the SNAP emergency. Wieland said that number is even higher for children and in rural parts of the state — higher still for single parents, renters, Black and indigenous Oregonians. About one in six Oregonians, one of the highest rates in the country, receives SNAP assistance.

“In many ways, we were already in a crisis,” he said, “and suddenly, the most effective safety net we have has been taken away from folks.”

Wieland said state leaders know they can’t replace the billions of dollars the federal government is cutting from basic food assistance over the next several years, and they need to find a path forward without it.

“I think we’re seeing an increased understanding of just how critical universal school meals are for families,” Wieland said. “It’s not just the kids who got free lunch before, but it’s the hundreds of thousands of middle-income families that are finding so much relief from the impact of not having to pack those meals every single day.

“It’s sort of like a massive tax break for families,” he said.

Food advocates have been pushing for statewide, universal meals across all 197 school districts in Oregon — and they’re closing in on that goal. Wieland said about 96% of public schools in Oregon offer free breakfast and lunch to all students. Lawmakers have inched closer over the past few years, and that final push could theoretically come in the upcoming short legislative session.

“Now that we know that H.R. 1 didn’t fundamentally change our school meal programs,” Wieland said, speaking about the Republican tax and government spending bill, “this is a place where legislators should feel far more confident investing in the long term, even as we grapple with big changes to SNAP.”

Down the road, advocates don’t want there to be a need for band-aid services like the pantry in Gladstone.

“Food banks should not be the answer to hunger in this country,” Wieland said, “and yet, it’s the position we’re in right now where food banks are filling this critical gap.”

The Gladstone Food Pantry is open year-round from 3-5:30 p.m. on Wednesdays at Kraxberger Middle School, 17777 Webster Road. The pantry will distribute food Thanksgiving week today, on Tuesday, Nov. 25, instead of Wednesday, in the same hours. The pantry will be closed Dec. 22 through Jan. 2. More information is available here.

Thanksgiving Break often means a pause in reliable meals for families since schools are closed. Oregon Food Bank has a map of local pantry locations across the state. Additional resources are available on the Oregon Department of Human Services website. Look on your individual school district’s website for more information on school-based meal options during the holidays.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/11/25/gladstone-school-district-community-pantry-hunger/