To the editor:

Imagine a child trying to learn, study and play when he or she is inadequately nourished and distracted by hunger every day. The negative effects of chronic hunger on children are particularly acute in the classroom, and pose immense educational challenges.

Over 400 children in our Princeton Public Schools — approximately one out of eight students — experience hunger and food insecurity first-hand. While they are provided with meals on weekdays during the school year by the school breakfast and lunch programs, these children are at greatest risk over the weekends, when there may not be enough food in the home.

Send Hunger Packing (SHP) is a grassroots, public-private initiative in Princeton that aims to send these children home from school on Fridays with a backpack full of kid-friendly, nutritionally sound food to ensure that they have meals over the weekend. For just $31,000, SHP can feed every hungry child in grades K-5 on weekends for the next school year — or just $160 per child.

Join us for our inaugural fundraising event on Sunday, June 9 at 4 p.m. at the Garden Theater in Princeton. Send Hunger Packing will proudly present the critically-acclaimed documentary film A Place at the Table, featuring Jeff Bridges and Top Chef Tom Coliccchio, and host a discussion afterwards with the film’s co-director Lori Silverbush. Ticket prices start at $50. To purchase, or to make a donation, please visit sendhungeroacking.ticketleap.com. 100 percent of your ticket price will go directly to fighting hunger in Princeton.

These food-filled backpacks will make an immeasurable difference in the lives and education of our community’s children. As school board members, we urge you to support this important cause, which depends almost entirely on private donations. No child in our schools should ever suffer from hunger, and we know that by nourishing the neediest children in our public schools, we give them a chance to learn and thrive in school and in life.

Molly Chrein, Andrea Spalla

Members of the Board of Education

of the Princeton Public Schools