An estimated 25% of children go hungry every day in Austin and every year during late November, Bowie holds a food drive every year during to help some of that 25%. This food drive, known as ‘pack the pod,’ is a tradition that the school is known for.

Student council advisor James Ellerbrock and the his group have been running the food drive for the last few years. Every student at Bowie was encouraged to bring at least one item, whether that be a can of corn, a jar of peanut butter, or some instant noodles.

“You can get a can of corn for about fifty cents, so we’re not asking a lot,” Ellerbrock said.

The food drive was just one of many going on at schools around Austin. Bowie was ranked against the other high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools participating.

“Bowie High School belongs to an organization called ‘A legacy of giving.’ It’s an organization in town [that] started about five years ago,” Ellerbrock said.

Overall, This year the school brought in 5,807 pounds of food. This is more than 1,500 more pounds of food than we brought in last year. The student council had a large role in raising awareness and collecting the food.

Bowie brought in the most food out of any school that was a part of the food drive.

The plan for this year’s food drive was to raise awareness so that everyone knows about the food drive. The students, teachers, and other faculty all had very important roles in raising the school’s awareness.

All of the food that was donated was loaded up into a POD near the cafeteria. The food was taken to the Capital Area Food Bank. The student council and Ellerbrock went to the food bank for an event on Tuesday, Nov. 24.

“I took the Student Council seniors to the food bank with students from all these other schools. The media was there. What we did is we unloaded the POD and put the food in these big barrels,” Ellerbrock said.

Ellerbrock is hoping to teach his students compassion as well as business strategies.

“No one in this country should go hungry … Get in that practice of giving. The students should care now, it’s not something that you wait until you’re an adult to do,” Ellerbrock said.

The goal for this year’s food drive is to bring in more food than last year. There is a competition that goes on between all of the schools that are a part of this food drive. The goal of the competition I to bring in as much food as possible. The more food brought in by a school, the higher that school will be on the leaderboards.

“It all culminated next Tuesday. About a week later I found out what place we came in,”
Ellerbrock said.

Last year the school brought in about 4,000 pounds of food. The food from last year was distributed all around Austin. It was given to those who needed it most. The people of Austin are also encouraged to help out whenever they can by donating food and money.

“We make a serious effort to get the word out to everybody and my students write a letter to every teacher and every adult who works here asking them to contribute” Ellerbrock said.

“I encouraged donations as a community service for the national honor society members,” teacher Vicki Hebert said.

Hebert, along with all of the teachers at Bowie were asked to get the word out and tell their students about the food drive. They either accepted the donations themselves or they sent their students up to the donation room in the b hall to add their food to the donation.

The student council used the morning announcements to raise awareness as well. The morning announcements are something that everyone on campus hears. During the weeks before and during the food drive there was an announcement that asked students to donate to the cause.

“Shelby Johnson, Cole Blagdan, and myself were the ones that made the actual announcements in the morning,” student council president Marcus Gallardo said. “We realized that the best way to spread the word would be through a pretty universal system. Almost everyone hears the morning announcements so it was the perfect opportunity to seize.”

There were posters put up around campus as well. They were up in all of the places where posters on the areas on the sides of the stairs and the walls above the water fountains.

These posters were made by the students. They worked very hard to raise awareness for the food drive.

“We tried our best to get on the morning announcements, we visited classrooms to give a little speech, and we wrote letters to all the teachers asking that they spread the word to their student,” Gallardo said.

The student body at Bowie rose to the occasion and worked together to help out the people of Austin. The whole school got together and made hundreds of families’ holiday season great.

“I’ve never been more proud of Student Council, I love them so much,” Gallardo said. “We collected more food than we did last year, and that’s all we strive to do, to be better than our former selves. It wasn’t just Student Council that impressed me though; the entire student body was able to show that they care about our community!”