Hello and welcome to Living In The Lehigh Valley, where our focus is your health and wellness.

I'm your host, Brittany Sweeney.

Community leaders, educators, students and parents all gathered recently to participate in an official ribbon cutting at Marvine Elementary School, in northeast Bethlehem, to officially celebrate its family and community center.

Our own Grover Silcox was there, he's here now to tell us a little bit about it.

Always great to see you, Grover, welcome.

- Same here, Brittany.

- Hope you are well.

So, it sounds like Marvine Elementary School really rallies around the community that surrounds them.

- Oh, it really does.

It's a title one distinguished school, in which 94% of the students are eligible for reduced and free lunch.

But the school does so much more, not just for the students, but the neighborhood around the school.

It is, in fact, a community school, which means that it's a hub for important resources for every member of the community in which the school is located.

- Sure.

So, do those who live around the area, do they take advantage of the family and community center for resources?

- They absolutely do.

The family and community center is a 3,000 square foot extension off the main school and folks go there for everything from food and clothing to special programs.

- It seems like a really needed place at this moment in time.

- It really is.

It features a fully stocked food pantry, clothing closet, conference room, and the center also houses Pre-K Counts and Parents As Teachers, two programs that help parents prepare their children for first grade.

Marvine Elementary is not only important to the students who go there and their families, it really has become a vital resource for the whole community.

So, it was with great excitement that Marvine's Principal Eric Fontanez welcomed the school's partners and supporters to the official ribbon cutting for the new, relatively new, family and community center.

- Thanks for coming out.

- Bethlehem's mounted police made tracks recently to the home of the Marvine Mustangs, at Marvine Elementary, in northeast Bethlehem.

They joined school officials, community and corporate leaders and other supporters for the official ribbon cutting to celebrate the school's family and community center.

- We are so excited to have you here to celebrate a space that houses so many great programs and supports to our community.

- Marvine's Principal Eric Fontanez spoke about how the school became a hub for the whole community when Marvine's community school coordinator noticed needs beyond the classrooms.

- Our journey started five years ago when Mr Cordova started at Marvine Elementary School.

He realized that our community needed support in their basic needs and came up with a starter plan to send some food bags home.

- It began by sending food bags to help 20 families.

Today, they provide food for more than 100 families a week.

- We knew that we needed to do more.

We wanted to be able to offer our families choices of fresh produce, dairy and meat so that they could prepare healthy, complete and culturally appropriate meals that they will enjoy.

- They formed a food pantry, and with help from the Junior League of the Lehigh Valley, the school purchased a refrigerator and freezer, which they've kept fully stocked with fresh foods thanks to school partners at the Second Harvest Food Bank.

- We also expanded our clothing closets thanks to support from our partners at Usborne.

And now we have an organized resource available to any of our families in need of coats or clothes, from babies to adults.

- Prior to the completion of the family and community center, the food, clothing and other supplies were kept in various makeshift storage spaces in the school itself.

- Early this school year, I hear from a parent whose family has been living in a hotel.

She told me that, without the food pantry, her family will go without food two days a week.

- Marvine's family and community center now serves as the school's focal point for community service.

- We want to continue transforming our school into a resources hub for all northeast Bethlehem by creating a center with a space to host our network partners, that provide services and resources to our community, from health-care providers to social-service organizations.

- At a school where 94% of the students are eligible for free and reduced lunch, the community center serves as a vital resource in the education of the students.

- At Marvine, this community center is one of the critical ways that the community comes together to support all of our children, to make sure that they're fed, that they're clothed, that they're supported, so that then when they walk the halls and go into classes here at Marvine Elementary School, they're ready to learn.

- Bethlehem's Mayor J William Reynolds expressed the city's thanks for the services Marvine and its partners provide the entire community.

- We could not be more proud to be here, to have just a few minutes to say thank you, to help out people that, you know, don't always call city hall or don't always walk in to city hall and say, these are the issues that are facing us.

But you're saving lives and you're doing the work that just doesn't go on in a lot of cities.

- So, this is our Parents As Teachers program.

- Marvine's culture of helping others in the community has created a spirit echoed throughout the school among faculty, students and their families.

When you walk around Marvine, you walk around the halls, you get a different feel.

You feel the energy, you feel the liveliness, and that's what makes everyone...

It puts a smile on their face.

- It's not just the school.

They're helping the whole community and anybody can come.

So, like, even if you have a neighbor, hey, if you need extra help, you can have the opportunity of coming to Marvine to get that little extra food or clothing.

- You guys doing a little dance?

- Marvine is a very incredible place.

- We love our students, we love our school, and we're very pleased to welcome our community in at any time.

- According to Dr Roy, Marvine Elementary serves as a model for others.

- We have a number of community schools.

- They have taken this to another level by having all of the resources in one place here so regularly.

And we want to build that out across our schools.

But we're hoping it's a model beyond our district.

The community school model really makes a difference in families' lives.

- That difference was on display at Marvine's ribbon cutting ceremony on this day in northeast Bethlehem.

In 2020, Marvine Elementary was named a national blue ribbon school by the US Department of Education for its success in closing the achievement gap.

It was the only school in the Lehigh Valley to receive that designation that year.

- Grover, that's a remarkable achievement.

- It is.

And even more remarkable are all the partners that have come together for Marvine to help provide programs and resources such as the food pantry, the clothing closet, the Pre-K Counts, all the programs that they have.

- Sure.

It's amazing how many partners have chipped in to help the school, help the community.

- Exactly.

To echo Superintendent Roy, the great thing about Bethlehem is that it's big enough to have all those kinds of partners, but small enough where you know everyone and you can just pick up a phone and get the help you need immediately.

- It's a wonderful thing happening right there in that little section of Bethlehem.

- It is.

And that's what the ribbon cutting was all about.

- Wonderful.

Grover, thank you so much.

- My pleasure.

That'll do it for this edition of Living In The Lehigh Valley.

I'm Brittany Sweeney, hoping you stay happy and healthy.