Written by Seth Gordon, Newberg Graphic

The school-wide effort produces 46 holiday meal boxes for less fortunate families 

When Alaina Santana served as an instructional leader and teacher at South Salem High School, she participated in a school-wide holiday food box project, in which the fixings for a complete holiday meal were collected and distributed to families in need. 

After becoming assistant principal at Newberg High School last year, Santana helped introduce a similar program, but because of time limitations, it was limited to staff, who organized and donated items, filling 12 boxes for families connected with the school.  

This year, Santana expanded the program across the whole school and invited students to pretty much run the show. 

The result blew Santana and other staff members away, as the effort resulted in 46 holiday food boxes, which were distributed to families Friday. 

“It was absolutely amazing,” NHS behavior specialist Shyla Jasper said. “We got so much more than we expected. Some people brought in stuff that wasn’t on the list, like granola bars and oatmeal packets. We feed kids that are hungry throughout the day, so the counseling office and the attendance office got all the stuff that you could eat as is.” 

Santana and fellow assistant principal Janay Cookson met with Jasper and the school’s counselors to generate a list of families that might benefit from a holiday food box. 

Each advisory class at the school was given a list to fill and elected two student captains to collect and organize donations from students, staff and parents. 

For senior Juan Cazares, it was an easy cause to get behind, which is why he stepped up to serve as a captain. 

“Everyone should be able to have food, something to provide for the family, especially in this season,” Cazares said. “Everyone should just be together and a week where we show how much we care. Some people may look like they don’t care, but in reality they do and I find this is one way to show that you do care. It’s easy and after you know you made those families happy, it just makes you feel like a better person.” 

All the donated food items, including either a turkey or a ham for each box, were brought to the West Commons Dec. 17 to be sorted for families of various size. 

There was so much food that any available teacher aides, as well as members of the Associated Student Body, were called into help with the sorting. 

“It was chaos, but it was awesome chaos,” Santana said. “We had so many kids down here from every advisory, from every grade level, all mixing and working together to organize our baskets. They all came together.” 

There were so many monetary donations that just about every box ended up including several bonus items, like eggs and bacon for a separate breakfast, as well as boxes of mandarin oranges. 

ASB representative Claire Boenisch, who came to help organize boxes, was a bit stunned to see how much was collected. 

“We’ve done canned food drives, but this is the most successful thing I’ve seen,” Boenisch said. “We held a canned food drive this week and that went really well, too. Having a lot of different opportunities for people to bring things was really effective.”