Construction on the school’s new classrooms are finally complete and the temporary classrooms that were in use last year are now gone. In their place is the brand new Transportation, Distribution and Logistics (TDL) Academy’s warehouse, which is what the area was originally designed for.

The construction project which started in 2017 concluded just before the start of this school year. The new space also includes two new classrooms for the academy, one of which is directly connected to the warehouse.

The purpose of the warehouse is to assist in the academy’s partnership with The Food Bank for the Heartland Backpack program. The program supplies packs filled with food for chronically hungry students who are identified by staff members at local elementary schools. TDL students help sort, pack and ship those meal packages.

The Food Bank for the Heartland ships food and drinks to the warehouse. Then students unload the trucks from the two new roll-up doors and then proceed to pack the food in bags to be sent out to elementary schools in Nebraska and Western Iowa.

The warehouse and classroom now include space for two weeks of product instead of just having space for one week like they used to have, a loading dock area, space for forklift simulators and a designated staging area. The overall space for the classroom and warehouse has more than doubled from the amount of space they had last year.

“I think that this new warehouse is a great improvement cause it’s bigger,” senior Brianna Zubia said.

TDL teacher Anthony Anderson predicts the new additions and extra space will help him and his students become more productive.

“We were waiting for students to move out of the way to get certain things done, Anderson said. “We couldn’t have more than four or five students in the warehouse when we were rearranging pallets just because it wasn’t safe. We didn’t want to mow anyone over with the pallet jack just because of crowdedness and now we’re not gonna have any of those issues.”

Last year the academy packaged and distributed 202,000 meals for the backpack program and this year they are projected to reach over 250,000. As of Tuesday, they had prepared 10,752 bags of food.

The addition has made many students happy, but the biggest thing contributing to their happiness is feeling like they are making a difference in comparison to just two years ago when they partnered with First Book.

“I feel like when I first joined, I felt like it was a mistake,” senior Gabriel Robles said. “I didn’t want to be here, but I’m glad I stuck with it… I’m proud to be a part of this program.”

Anderson, who has been the TDL teacher for four years, has seen the program grow substantially and he agrees with students.

“It was more like a task and a duty that everyone, overall, kind of dreaded participating in,” Anderson said.

Now he feels they have found purpose and that they now enjoy coming in everyday to help.