As Mayre Hitchcock perused the shelves of the Coeur d’Alene High School Food Pantry, she selected a few boxes of cereal. She needed breakfast for the weekend and all next week.

Eventually her friend found her and chose a few items off the shelves, too.

“This helps me, it very much does,” said Hitchcock, a sophomore at CHS. “Me and my mom live together. She doesn’t work so we don’t have much money, so we don’t have much money for food. It’s helped us out a lot.”

Every week, Hitchcock goes to the food pantry and takes what she needs for her family.

“For a lot of these kids, this is important to them, it takes away that edge of not knowing where their next meal is coming from,” said Eric Brewer, the high school’s student council adviser. “These two are here all the time.”

Friday marked the grand opening of the Coeur d’Alene High School Food Pantry, a vision the school’s student council has had for more than a year.

The pantry had a soft opening in September and has been open to students, but now it is open to the public as well. It will be open every third and fourth Friday of each month from 2:30 to 4 p.m. as long as school is in session.

Brewer added if any student needs food or a snack throughout the day, the school’s teachers and administration know the pantry is open at all times and can access it.

Sienna Sanchez, the president of the student council’s community committee that oversees and runs the food pantry, said they decided to operate the food pantry later in the month because that’s when people's food stamps start to run out.

“We decided to be open later in the month so as food stamps get used up they can have that second supply of food open to them,” she said.

Now that the pantry is open, Sanchez said the Student Council is working with the school’s counselors to reach out to students who are on meal plans. Hopefully, she said, they can get more students to get over the fear or maybe embarrassment they might have about going to the pantry if they need food.

The student council teamed up with Second Harvest to get food for the pantry.

Once the pantry has been running for a while, Brewer said, the student council will probably start doing food drives as well.

Brewer said the idea for a food pantry came from a discussion the student council had about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The group realized that for students and families to succeed in school and in life, some of their basic needs have to be met first.

“This is such an amazing opportunity for our students and the greater community,” said CHS Associated Student Body President Malia Clark. “Our job is to help other people and I can’t think of a better way than to provide food. If you can’t eat, you can’t learn.”