BY JESSICA STEELEY
Clarkston News Staff Writer

For some students in Clarkston, schools meals are their main source of nourishment and breaks can cause them to go without.
This spring break the Clarkston Transportation Department decided to help four families in this situation through a Michigan Education Department (MEA) Out Reach Grant.
Clarkston Bus Driver Randi Scriver said this is the first year the department has applied for the grant, but they plan to continue to do so in future years to help Clarkston students.
“Next year we were talking about trying to help some of the sixth graders who can’t afford to go to camp,” Scriver said. They got together with the teacher’s union to find families who could use extra help over spring break.
“We had employees from the bus garage help donate food,” Scriver said. “They went to the grocery stores and bought the food. We did a questionnaire for each of the families, that way we didn’t buy anything the family wouldn’t eat.”
The donation was provided by the Michigan Education Association members of the Clarkston Transportation Department.
Sue Cox, president of Clarkston Transportation Department, said the grant gave them $610 in total for the families, which were from two Clarkston schools.
The grant is specifically for education support staff and is one of the methods available for the department to help the Clarkston community.
“We were going to try to help people, families at Christmas time, but there were some complications,” Cox said. “When [the grant] finally came through, I asked if we could do the same thing for the families during the spring break because there are so many families where the kids eat breakfast and lunch at school.”
Cox said the MEA thought spring break was a great choice because not many people think about how families need help over spring break when children have a whole week off.
“My group decided that would be something that would be good for the community,” Cox said.