In November 2020, Linda Tutt High School in Sanger, Texas, opened something few schools had tried: a grocery store inside the building, run by students, where nobody pays with money. Students and families shop with points instead. Every household receives a weekly allowance, and students can earn extra points through good behaviour, schoolwork and campus jobs.
The idea came during the first pandemic year, when many families lost income and food banks were stretched. It was believed at the time to be the first store of its kind inside a US high school. Here is how it worked, who was behind it, why the points system drew both praise and criticism, and what the numbers from 2020 actually show.
Where and why it opened
Sanger is a town of roughly 9,000 people about 50 miles north of Dallas. Across the Sanger Independent School District, about 2,750 students were enrolled at the time and roughly 43 per cent were classed as economically disadvantaged, principal Anthony Love told NBC News. About 3.6 per cent of the district's students were considered homeless, and he believed the true figure had risen during the pandemic.
Texas Health Resources, a large non-profit hospital system, had identified Sanger as a food-insecure area. Its grants, about $300,000 in total, helped pay not only for the store but also for a counsellor, a nurse and a resource navigator to help parents find support services.
How the points system worked
NBC News and CBS Texas described the rules in detail:
- A weekly allowance for every family. Households received points based on size: 40 for families of three or fewer, rising to 65 for families of six or more. Points refreshed every week.
- Cheap, simple prices. Items cost one to three points. Students set the values themselves; a can of green beans, for example, cost one point.
- Extra points for effort. Students could earn more through positive office referrals (notes from staff praising good conduct or kindness), and through on-campus jobs such as working in the school garden, mentoring younger pupils or helping as an assistant.
- Points could be given away. Families who did not need their allowance could donate it.
The store opened three days a week for students and district staff, and on Tuesday evenings for the wider community. It was set up in a spare room of the school with help from Albertsons, the supermarket company, and First Refuge Ministries, a local faith-based charity. CBS Texas reported that the store would also hold weekly food drives.
A store run by teenagers
Students did the real work: stocking shelves, tracking inventory, checking out shoppers and bagging groceries. Five students were employed, three of them as managers. Getting one of those jobs was treated like a real job hunt, with an application, two references and a requirement to keep passing grades.
One of the managers was 11th-grader Preston Westbrook, who told CNN in December 2020 that helping others was simply part of who he was.
"I'm here to make sure students get what they need."
Beyond feeding families, the store gave students practical experience in retail, budgeting and customer service. CBS Texas noted they would also learn how to run sales when stock was running high.
The idea behind it, and the criticism
The store was the idea of Paul Juarez, executive director of First Refuge Ministries, who had spent about two decades in the grocery business. The aim was to give families food in a way that felt normal rather than like charity.
When the story spread online, some people objected to the headline version, that students had to "pay" with good deeds. To critics, that sounded like making struggling children earn food. Both organisers said that was a misunderstanding. Juarez told NBC News, "Everybody gets points", explaining that every household received its weekly allowance regardless of behaviour. Love said no one would be turned away, and that he would even deliver groceries to a family's home if needed.
Love also argued that having every student use the same system protected dignity:
"If everybody's doing it, it takes away the embarrassment."
That reflects a well-known problem with school food help: many teenagers skip free meals or food pantries because they do not want classmates to know their family is struggling. A store that everyone uses, with rewards for effort layered on top, sidesteps much of that stigma.
The economic picture in 2020
The store opened in the middle of the worst US jobs crisis in decades. In its July 2020 report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 16.3 million unemployed people and an unemployment rate of 10.2 per cent, down from even higher levels in the spring. Some articles at the time gave much larger figures, such as 51 million; those mixed up the running total of unemployment insurance claims with the number of people out of work in a given month.
Even with jobs slowly returning, many families were dealing with reduced hours or small businesses that had closed. Food insecurity rose sharply, and schools became one of the main places families turned to for help.
A model others wanted to copy
Juarez told NBC News he had heard from school officials in California, Delaware, North Carolina and Oregon who wanted to set up something similar, and he offered to help them. The model's appeal is easy to see: it uses a space a school already has, involves students in meaningful work, builds partnerships with local businesses and charities, and reaches families through a place they already trust.
The real test of any programme like this is whether families can count on it week after week, and whether students and shoppers feel respected. By those measures, the Sanger store's design, with a guaranteed allowance, student ownership and no one turned away, offered a thoughtful template for other communities.
Sources: NBC News, December 2020; CBS Texas, 18 November 2020; US Bureau of Labor Statistics: Employment Situation, July 2020.
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