St. Thomas serves as a faith community sponsor for Comanche Elementary School located in the Shawnee Mission School District. Comanche is a title one school with an 86% rate of students on free and reduced lunches of which 44% are ELL Students. This school also has a high count of families being deported and often times, one parent is left behind to care for the family. In many cases, families are doubling up in the same household, and frequently, many young children are considered latch key kids as they are left home alone after school.
As a faith community sponsor, we in combination with the City of Overland Park, Johnson County Library, the Overland Park Police Department, Community Impact Church and various other local businesses and organizations have committed to helping develop relationships and a sense of trust among both Comanche Elementary and Overland Park communities by supporting the school to help build and grow the relationships between the school staff and families on both an educational and social level.
Ways we support the Comanche Community:
- BackSnacks: Prepacked healthy snacks and beverages from Harvesters are provided weekly to students who qualify for additional support.
- Mobile Food Pantry: Held the second Saturday of each month to distribute food to families in need of emergency food assistance. Food is provided by Harvesters and each distribution consists primarily of fresh produce and various other fresh/frozen dairy and meat products. It is provided on a first come first serve basis. Volunteers help unload from the truck, sort, and then load the grocery items into vehicles. Approximately 120-150 households are served each month.
- School Supplies: Donate school supplies, volunteer with setup/packing/cleanup, recruitment/organization of volunteers (annually)
- Holiday Shop: Donate a collection of household and gift items to support the school’s Holiday Shop. This shop is provided for students to use earned fun money to purchase gifts from the shop for their families and loved ones at Christmas.
- Assessment Snacks: Donate snacks for students during their assessment test weeks, recruit/organize snack donation (annually)
- Meals: Community picnic, Dinner for teachers and staff during parent/teacher conferences, and 6th Grade Graduation Breakfast (Recruit volunteers for Setup/food donations/cook/serve/cleanup per annual events – all events are annually)
- Mobile Library: Donate books, organize the donation drives (as school requests)
- Emergency support to families in need (donate clothing, furniture, and food donations when needed)
- Cold weather items: Collect winter coats and other cold weather items and delivers them to the school
- Recruit and organize volunteers with any event as they come up
To get involved, please contact the St. Thomas office at 913-451-0512!