The Coeur d’Alene School District jumped into action Monday in response to the empty shelves at the Community Action Partnership Food Bank.

Canfield Middle School moved its annual food drive up a month and the district as a whole is starting a food drive.

“We saw the article in the newspaper and decided why wait?” said Becky Miller, an eighth-grade teacher at Canfield Middle School and the mentor adviser. “The need is now so we decided to jump on it.”

Canfield’s mentors are eighth-grade student leaders who do community service projects, help sixth-graders get acclimated to middle school life and promote a positive school environment.

Every year the group holds a canned food drive in March, but since the community is in need now, the group decided to bump it up.

Last year, Miller said, the school donated 2,000 pounds of food to the food bank, and she hopes to reach that mark again.

“If we could do something similar, that would be fabulous,” she said.

Canfield Middle School is working with Eat Smart Idaho through the University of Idaho to encourage more nutritious donations for the food drive.

The drive will run through next week and end Friday, Feb. 17, which also happens to be National Random Acts of Kindness Day.

However, the food drives don’t stop there. The Coeur d’Alene School District is having a district-wide food drive that will run until Feb. 28.

“We’re not in competition with anybody,” said School Board Trustee Dave Eubanks, who spearheaded the district food drive. “We just want to stock shelves in the food bank so no one in our community goes hungry.”

Community Action Partnership Food Bank manager Nicol Barnes said since an article in The Press over the weekend talked about the food bank’s needs, she has received food donations, monetary donations, and even more businesses and organizations that want to do food drives.

Barnes said the food bank’s shelves are slowly being restocked. Most needed are side dishes, she said, such as mac-and-cheese, instant mashed potatoes, rice, pasta and canned beans.

“The community has really stepped up, it’s been amazing,” Barnes said. “We’ve had people drop food off every day and give money donations.”

The Community Action Partnership Food Bank serves more than 1,000 people each week from Kootenai County.

To make a donation or for more information, contact the Community Action Partnership Food Bank at (208) 770-3018.