For 14 years, the Wellsville-Middletown Buddy Pack program has provided nutritious, non-perishable food items for children to eat over the weekend.

Now, the program will be going through a change. It will transition to a new school-based food pantry called Tiger Table.

This free program will be open to all students and family who reside in the Wellsville-Middletown R-I School District.

“I’m optimistic about the change to the food pantry,” said Julie Day, one of the helpers of the Tiger Table. “I think it would be good for our students and our community. We’ll see what it brings to the students in the community.”

Parents and students will come to W-M Elementary School on the second and fourth Thursday of the month to pick up food. The first day is scheduled for March 12 from 3:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m. The pantry is located in Room 302.

“The parents and students will come to the school twice a month and pick up their own foods so that they can get what they want,” Day said. “When we had the buddy packs, they just had certain foods in them. So it was already a fixed meal whereas now the student and the parents can come and choose what they want. Hopefully, that works out more for the family.”

The Buddy Pack program operated at the Wellsville United Methodist Presbyterian Church for its first 12 years before it moved to W-M Elementary in 2024.

“For the past two years, we had this room and it’s been a lot easier for packing and it’s been a lot easier for the food orders to come in because it’s closest to that big door, so it’s a lot of easier access for us to just come to this room and get the buddy packs and pass them out,” Day said. “That was a very positive change because it took a lot of manpower to get the food.”

In the Buddy Pack program, Buddy Packs were filled by local volunteers and placed in the child’s backpack on Fridays every week. The final day of the Buddy Pack program was on Feb. 27.

“I felt it was successful,” Day said. “We fluctuated in numbers quite a bit. There were kids who truly needed the Buddy Packs and every year, they faithfully took them home when I passed them out. So I’m going to miss giving those buddy packs to the students.”

Clinetta Weinrich and Nancy Blaue are also helpers of the Tiger Table.

Weinrich, who is a W-M School District board member, became involved in the Buddy Pack program when she was a kindergarten teacher at W-M in 2012.

“Clinetta is the one who thought this food pantry was going to be a fresh start for us, so I jumped on board with it,” Day said. “I think it will be a positive change. I’m optimistic that it’s going to be as effective as passing out the Buddy Packs.”

Day said Blaue has been a valuable member to the Buddy Pack program.

“She has coordinated schedules for people to come in and help pack the Buddy Pack every week,” she said. “She has done a great job with that.”

Day, who works as an elementary school counselor at W-M, has been passing out Buddy Packs to cubbies and lockers at the school for the last 14 years.

“My main job was passing them out and giving them a head count for how many students who signed up for Buddy Packs,” Day said. “So I collected the papers for the parents to sign their kids up for Buddy Packs and give that total to Nancy.”