Bay County school is the first to receive refrigerated food locker
BAY COUNTY, Fla. (WMBB) – Parker Elementary School is the first school in Bay County to receive a refrigerated food locker. Eight compartments inside the refrigerator offer convenient access to Parker Elementary School families.
'Over 80% of our kids need help with food. There's a lot of food in food insecurity, not just here at Parker, but around the community. We serve them, you know, giving them food bags each week. Now we have this amazing locker that parents can come up when they get off work,' Parker Elementary Principal Jo Beth Davis said.
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Each compartment within the refrigerator holds up to a week's worth of food for one family.
'We try to create access and sometimes parents or families just can't get here during normal business hours so having a food locker that's 24 hours a day just opens up that asset access a bit more. So if you have a family that can't get to a food source until after work hours or late in the evening, then the food locker will provide that,' Executive Director of Rebuild Bay County Donna Pilson said.
The convenience of this locker will provide families with easy access to food, helping to alleviate some of the challenges of food insecurity. The best way to get in contact for this food locker is through Facebook.
School officials will post a QR code on Facebook. Parents can scan it to access the e-registration form. Then the school contacts the parents.
Parents will then receive an email with a QR code to pick up their food.
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'I have the email and I can do the pick-up process. So when a parent or a community member wants to use a locker, once they get the QR code, they would just come up to this machine and then slide across here. And then it'll ask for either a pin or the barcode and it comes to them and an email and they can easily take the QR code and just scan it right here,' Family and Community Engagement Coordinator Jordan Davis said.
The food comes from community donations.
'On campus, we have what we call it, our SHIP room, which stands for Sharing Hope In Partnership. That's exactly what we're doing. So we have an expanded food locker. We have freezers donated by a community partner, and we have food that's donated by community partners. Everything is sustained by community partners,' Director of North West Partnership Schools Sharis Robinson said.
Robinson says this is not a handout, but a hand-up. The main goal for this refrigerated locker is to lead families to sustain themselves. Rebuild Bay County hopes to add more refrigerated lockers at other locations.
Rutherford and A.D. Harris Learning Village are under consideration.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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