Low-income and homeless students in the San Francisco Unified School District will receive school and dental supply kits to ensure that they have the resources to stay focused on their education.
District Superintendent Richard Carranza spoke to students of Bret Harte Elementary School in the city’s Bayview neighborhood who received kits Monday morning.
The distribution was made possible through a district partnership with nonprofit K to College that will reach 12,500 students at 30 schools until the end of October, K to College Executive Director and cofounder Benito Delgado-Olson said.
At least 80 percent of students at the participating schools receive a free lunch, Delgado-Olson said.
Low-income families juggle their finances between clothing, food, transportation or other needs to make ends meet and the kits provide one less stress for them, district spokeswoman Gentle Blythe said.
The organization also plans on distributing dental kits one week before Halloween when many children eat sweets, he said.
Each student will receive a kit worth $65 and the supplies are appropriate to their grade, he said.
The nonprofit will continue to serve the district as schools may identify more homeless students throughout the school year, Delgado-Olson said.
K to College started as a student group at the University of California at Berkeley and has since served more than 220,000 students in more than 60 school districts throughout the state since 2010, according to the organization’s website.
This is the nonprofit’s largest distribution to date in San Francisco, Delgado-Olson said.
Jamey Padojino, Bay City News
