Franklin Park students help restock local food pantry

By Dennis Rosenberger | March 23, 2026 |

By DENNIS ROSENBERGER
stceditor@salemtc.net

SALEM — Students at Franklin Park Middle School in Salem dedicated two weeks to their annual canned food drive this month and on Friday, March 20, they delivered the collected items to the Salem Ministerial Alliance Community Food Pantry at Grace United Methodist Church (UMC).

Franklin Park Principal Tyler Lux joined the eighth grade members of the student council on Friday morning as they delivered the food to the pantry, unloading two trailers and helping to sort the food items, along with pantry volunteers.

Lux explained that over the course of the two-week-long food drive, the students went out and visited local businesses to seek donations, with a number of eighth grade students also making calls to businesses.

Students also got donations from family and friends during the drive and when all was said and done, this year’s Franklin Park Food Drive collected 9,162 items overall. Of that total, the eighth grade class collected 5,165 items, according to Lux.

He explained that the annual drive is a way for the school to teach the students about the importance of serving their community and giving back to those in need.

“It’s really just a good thing for them to see … that we’re helping our community and that philanthropy aspect is part of the education that we want to instill in them,” said Lux. “So it’s a really good thing, and we just incentivize it a little bit with some friendly competition between homerooms.”

The homerooms at each grade level competed and the homerooms that collected the most received donuts as their prize. In addition, as the overall winning grade level, the eighth graders will get a trip to the bowling alley as their reward.

For their outstanding effort to collect over 5,000 food items, the eighth graders will also get a chance to “slime” Lux and a few other members of the administration and faculty at the end of the school year.

For the Salem Ministerial Alliance Community Food Pantry, the donations they receive from the schools each year, between Salem Community High School in the fall and Franklin Park Middle School in the spring, help them to be able to continue to serve the residents and families in and around Salem that need some assistance.

Food Pantry Coordinator Carol Ann Short noted that they have seen the need increase significantly over the past year, as prices of food, and other goods, have risen.

“We’re serving anywhere from 600 to 700 families a month right now,” Short said on Friday morning. “So the need has definitely gone up … and we’re hearing people share concerns about food benefits being cut. So, they’re definitely utilizing the pantry a lot more than they were a year ago.”

She thanked the schools for their efforts each year to help restock the food pantry’s shelves.

“We get to the point where we are running out of the selection of things. … We don’t have canned corn or we don’t have cereal. So, when we get the donations from the high school and the junior high, it helps tremendously because it gives us a bigger selection of food,” Short said.

Short explained that the pantry holds food distributions at Grace United Methodist Church in Salem every Monday and Thursday.

“So it’s Monday from 1:30 until 5 p.m., and on Thursday it’s from 10 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.,” she said. “We just ask that people are from Marion County. … We’re here for everybody. We don’t ask any questions. You don’t have to prove anything.”

Anyone wishing to use the food pantry can get a voucher from one of the area churches, or they can just show up on one of the distribution days and receive a voucher there.

Short noted that the Ministerial Alliance is always accepting donations of support for the pantry, whether in the form of food or money. Donations can be made at Grace UMC.