More than 150 volunteers gathered Saturday at Kaiser Permanente Arena in Santa Cruz with a simple mission: make sure thousands of Santa Cruz County students are ready to begin the school year.
Working assembly-line style during the 17th annual Stuff the Bus Stuff-A-Thon, volunteers filled 2,500 backpacks with notebooks, binders, pencils, calculators and other classroom essentials before loading them onto a school bus for distribution across the county.
The backpacks are destined for students experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity, as well as foster youth, through local school districts and nonprofit organizations.
“The event is all about ensuring that students across Santa Cruz County have everything they need to start the school year ready to succeed,” said Santa Cruz County Office of Education spokesman Nick Ibarra.
This year marks the first time the program has included backpacks designed for transitional kindergarten students, reflecting the recent expansion of TK programs across California. Those younger students will receive smaller backpacks stocked with age-appropriate supplies.
According to the latest data, more than 2,800 Santa Cruz County students are considered homeless under the federal McKinney-Vento Act. That includes children living in doubled-up housing, motels, vehicles or unsheltered situations.
Ibarra said the annual drive is especially important in Santa Cruz County, which was recently ranked the nation’s least affordable housing market for the fourth consecutive year.
“Stuff the Bus is about reducing one kind of pressure that families face when they go back to school,” he said. “Taking care of their backpacks and school supplies lets them focus on those other challenges.”
After the backpacks are assembled, they are returned to the County Office of Education, which distributes them to school districts and nonprofit partners that work directly with homeless and foster youth.
In addition to school supplies, each backpack contains resources designed to connect families with services. Those include bilingual housing guides, information about 211 assistance, foster youth programs, dental care resources from Dientes Community Dental Care and basic hygiene items such as toothbrushes.
“This is our favorite event, because we see everyone in the community coming together to help their community,” said Kim Luke, community engagement spokesperson with West Coast Community Bank, which brought seven volunteers.
Funding for the program comes from a partnership between the Santa Cruz County Office of Education and United Way of Santa Cruz County, along with corporate sponsors and individual donors.
Ibarra said the County Office of Education’s staff alone raised about $5,000 through an internal fundraising campaign this year. Overall, he estimated it costs roughly $45,000 to purchase the supplies for all 2,500 backpacks, with United Way helping secure discounts and donations from suppliers.
The Stuff the Bus campaign has become an annual tradition, combining fundraising throughout July with the volunteer Stuff-A-Thon that prepares thousands of backpacks for local students before classes begin later this month.
For information, visit unitedwaysc.org/stb
