The holidays are in full swing; that means food, family and festive celebrations. For students and staff in the Queen Creek Unified School District, it also means time to give back and make a difference. During November, all eight schools in QCUSD collected food donations to ensure Queen Creek families in need have holiday feasts with all the fixings’.

Boxes and boxes of food donations filled school hallways and classrooms; some of the boxes were even overflowing. A few of the schools in the district even turned the food drive into a competition to see which class could collect the most donations. Frances Brandon Pickett Elementary held a turkey drive in addition to collecting canned goods. The 67 turkeys collected weighed 937 pounds! Pickett students then donated the birds to the United Food Bank in Mesa.

With more than 5000 canned and boxed food items collected, volunteers at the Queen Creek Family Resource Center located at Queen Creek Middle School assembled more than 140 food boxes. The volunteers then took time out of their day to distribute the food boxes to deserving families in the community. The Queen Creek Unified School District also does a food collection around Christmas time.