By Cindy Arora
As soon as the pandemic hit, San Clemente-based ALC knew students were going to need help.
ALC Schools transports students with disabilities for over 400 districts nationally, but also close to home in the Capistrano Unified School District.
Staff rolled up their sleeves, put on their gloves and delivered food to 100 families in the CUSD.
CUSD Insider spoke with Megan Carey, an ALC representative, who helped coordinate the delivery of 100 bags of food to families in the district.
Insider: Can you share with us a bit about the food delivery that was dropped at the doors of families, and the idea behind it?
Carey: Our corporate office is here in San Clemente and most of our children go to Capistrano Unified School District. As soon as the pandemic hit we know that there would be students in our community that would need additional food so we wanted to help in any way possible.
For many districts across the U.S. we have been transporting meals and supplies to students, but Capistrano USD’s bus drivers were really able to take care of that! So, we figured we could do the next best thing and see if we could prepare 100 bags of food to donate to students, and then drop them off at their homes.
Capistrano USD has been a great partner to ALC for more than 12 years so we were grateful to be able to help during this time, even in a small way.
We only wish we could have done this for every district we partner with.
Insider: What kind of food was in the drop off?
Carey: Soup, macaroni and cheese, pretzels, fruit pouches, chips to name a few. Mainly a few meals as well as a lot of snacks as that is what we were able to get right after the pandemic hit.
Insider: Can you share some info on ALC?
Carey: We are a supplemental student transportation company, meaning we work as an extension to our district partners to help transport students in smaller capacity vehicles when they may be going out of district or when there is a specific transportation need a student has. Typically, we help transport the most high-needs students in districts we serve, not always an easy job but one we have strived to be the best at and focus on one student at a time. We started here locally almost 20 years ago and have since expanded into 20 states.
Insider: What was the hope of ALC dropping off food in the midst of these times?
Carey: Our hope was to just simply help our community in any way we could have, personally and professionally. Times like this is when the community needs to come together and support one another and get creative in doing so. Our company has no doubt taken a huge hit during this with our business stopping across the country within a week. It is unclear as to when we will start back up, but school will come back and we will be ready. With our operation stopping, that meant we had resources and people to help, so it was the right thing to do and we at ALC always strive to do the right thing no matter what.