Children at Oak Harbor Elementary School are having a charitable Christmas season.

Randy Ross’ fifth-grade class and Duane Sisto’s fourth-grade class were at local supermarkets last weekend collecting canned food for the North Whidbey Help House.

They collected a lot of food, too. They shattered a school record when they collected approximately 6,000 food items Monday morning when the Help House van stopped by the school. The prior record was around 4,000 items.

“They’ve been really good workers with it,” Ross said. Students spent their Tuesday morning packing food, which had been stored in the hallway, into boxes before being given to the food bank.

The classes started collecting food from classmates in November. Then they spent the weekend at Saars, Safeway and Albertsons explaining to residents about the food drive while collecting items.

“It was good for them to be out in public,” Ross said. Students spent eight hours Saturday and eight hours Sunday collecting food from shoppers.

Ross said the food drive was a good chance to learn as well. Students used their math skills to develop spreadsheets to track the amount of food collected.

The food is definitely needed. The Help House provides food for approximately 415 families each month. That equates to approximately 1,200 people served.

Jean Wieman, Help House executive director, said staff recently started tracking the income level of the civilians who get food from Help House. She said family income averages around $750 a month.

Jean Wieman said the donations have flowed in this year and volunteers are busy making more room.

“Donations have been coming in fast and furious. It’s been wonderful,” Wieman said.

The excess donations are a big help because it provides a backup supply to get through the year, especially when donations taper off in later months. She said while the donations may be low in those months, the number of hungry people remains the same and they always need food.

“People are hungry 365 days a year,” Wieman said.

She said the weeks following Christmas could be busy ones for the Help House. And the increase in business stems from last week’s wind storm that knocked out power on Whidbey Island.

She said some low-income residents lost food after being without power for several days and they may show up to the Help House to restock.

As for the Help House, the food shelf closed on the Friday of the power outage. Wieman said she wanted to keep the organization’s refrigerators closed to protect the perishable food. She did help the American Red Cross, however. She brought some non-perishable food over to the emergency shelter being operated out of the Oak Harbor Senior Center.

With people needing food after the holidays, Wieman is always looking for donations.

The Help House, located on Hathaway Street in downtown Oak Harbor, is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. People can simply show up to make donations of food or money, Wieman said.