We put out the call a little while back when the Lowell Food Pantry refrigerator had apparently given up the ghost—and now we’ve got a brand new one, the H.M.S. Frigidaire, pictured below humming away in the cafeteria!

Thank you to everyone who scrambled to find a fridge and look for alternate solutions—and a GIANT THANK-YOU to donor Kathy Cochran, who stepped up and got this beautiful new fridge.

If you’re not familiar with the Food Pantry, this is an ongoing program at Lowell, operated in partnership with the University District Food Bank. Each Friday, volunteers meet in the Lowell cafeteria after the start of school and help distribute weekend-meal bags for Lowell kids. Since over 60% of our students receive free or reduced cost lunch, and approximately a third are housing-insecure (living in shelters or other temporary housing), the Food Pantry is hugely important to us. For some of our kids, these food bags are their only reliable food over the weekend.

(If you’d like to volunteer to help the Food Pantry, contact lowellparents@gmail.com.)

When you’re talking to people outside of our school community, it often helps to have some quick facts about Lowell.

Our school has changed a lot in the last few years—it now *is* the downtown elementary school, with approximately a third of our kids living in homeless shelters or transitional housing (although that number fluctuates, given the instability of that population). Feel free to share this flier anywhere to help inspire support for Lowell.

Download the flier.

If you were at the General Meeting last week, you know that our PTA membership voted to formally endorse the Housing for All Platform, created by a coalition that is working to address homelessness in Seattle.

With approximately a third of our students housing insecure (i.e., living in shelters or other temporary housing), this is a hugely important issue to our community. We joined many fellow endorsers, incuding the PTAs of McGilvra and Stevens.

Check out the Housing for All site for more information—especially the Take Action page if you want to know how you can help.