School Full of Compassion : Homeless: Parents and students at a Santa Monica private school bring extra sack lunches to donate to the Ocean Park Community Center.

It’s not on the scale of Comic Relief, but it comes straight from the heart and the kitchen cupboards.

Every Wednesday morning, children at PS No. 1, a small private school in Santa Monica, tote two sack lunches to school--one for themselves and one for a homeless person. They deposit the extra lunches into a crate at the school gate, then the food is whisked to the nearby Ocean Park Community Center by a parent and some students.

The project is the brainstorm of the PS No. 1 Parents’ Guild community services committee, which wanted to go beyond holiday feeding programs, committee member Audrey Arlen said.

“We also wanted children to feel they participate in something in their everyday lives,” Arlen said. By helping to deliver the lunches, the students, ages 5 to 12, see that “what they’re doing went to somebody--not just, ‘Oh, my mommy’s writing a check.’ ”

The voluntary program was launched last fall, and the response has been enthusiastic, Arlen said. Parents clamored to be delivery drivers, she said, and now, as the school year winds down, lunches continue to come in at a rate of about 30 a week.

The school, whose initials stand for “Pluralistic School,” has 89 students. Arlen said that although some families have never contributed a lunch, “every child is aware of this happening” and is more conscious of the homeless.

A few students who have brought extra lunches said they did so--at least originally--because it’s a school activity.

Casey Mortensen, 11, said he participates “to help people who are less fortunate.” But he acknowledged that “I normally wouldn’t have thought of it . . . but (the school) brought it up.” Others said they felt powerless to help the homeless, and the lunch program provided an easy way to do so.

The plight of the homeless is not new to the children, most of whom live on the Westside. They see transients on Wilshire Boulevard and at the beach. PS No. 1 classes regularly play and eat lunch at Memorial Park, and uneaten lunches are left for the homeless.

Some of the homeless are probably just lazy, students said. But “some (were) fired from their job” through no failings of their own, Casey said. He said that instead of food, he likes to bring shampoo, toothpaste or toothbrushes on Wednesdays, because they last longer.

Homelessness could happen to anyone, children said. “It probably wasn’t even their fault,” said Danny Levene, 10. “They’re regular people--with no money.”

“You see them in blankets,” huddled in doorways, he said. “It’s just terrible to see them.”

“But you can understand that they’d go nuts living like that,” said Nico Zimmerman, 11.

On a recent Wednesday, it was Nico’s turn to visit the Ocean Park Community Center. At 9:15 a.m., Nico, his mother and 6-year-old sister loaded the lunches into the family’s Toyota Land Cruiser for the seven-block jaunt from the school on Euclid Street to the center, at 7th Street and Colorado Avenue.

“We’re vegetarian, but I put meat in it because I figure they don’t get much protein,” said Nico’s mother, Joan Andersson, describing the sandwich she made that morning. Typically, she said, she’ll also pack fruit, juice, chips, granola bars and extra canned food.

The family carried in the lunch crate and two grocery bags stuffed with sacks, some of them printed with whimsical penguins and dirt bikes to appeal to children. In addition to the sandwiches, yogurt, trail mix and apple juice, the contributions included a batch of bran muffins and children’s clothing.

In the brightly lit center, lines of homeless people snaked up to sleek counters to receive clothing, counseling, referrals to health clinics, assignments to shelters, and lunches and provisions such as dried beans and peanut butter. Other people milled about, chatting to themselves or to one another. Several stuffed their belongings in tote bags or luggage carts. Their clothes were ill-fitting and worn, their hair and beards scruffy.

Andersson crouched down to daughter Emma and explained that the homeless could get showers and food there.

The center, a converted surgical-instruments factory, distributes food to 100 to 200 people a day, Executive Director Vivian Rothstein said. Every year, it serves about 4,500 people. “You just have to need food. We provide it,” Rothstein said.

About a third of the food is donated by individuals, churches, restaurants and civic groups, a third is from the Westside Food Bank and a third is bought, Rothstein said. Donations, especially juice and high-protein food, are always needed, she said.

Other schools run food drives periodically, but PS No. 1 is the only one to provide sack lunches on a regular basis, Rothstein said.

Nico Zimmerman said the visit left him sad. “People could give a little more money (to the homeless),” he said, adding that he gives panhandlers any spare change he has. He fired off other suggestions to help the homeless: employment programs, “vacant motel rooms--let them use them, an initiative to give them more money.”

His opinion on why they are homeless is strong and clear: “I think it’s capitalism. A lot of people are idiots, a lot of people are greedy.”

“Communism would be better,” he said. Or at least, he quickly added, a combination of “the best of both” capitalism and communism.

Andersson said that, in discussing homeless people with her children, “I just try to make it clear it’s just people--who’re down on their luck.” The lunch project, she said, is “an extension of the way kids are treated (at PS No. 1). Kids are treated as individuals. . . . You don’t put people down.”

“Elementary school is the time for kids to learn about people who’re different from themselves,” PS No. 1 Director Joel Pelcyger said.

He said that the school has had seven deaf students in classes with the hearing children. “If they’re not exposed to people who are different, you’re led to a lifetime of prejudice,” he said.

Given those lessons, said Andersson, “I think it’s hard for kids to (understand) how you can just walk by” a homeless person.

The 19-year-old school prides itself on its community spirit. The students, who are grouped by two-year age ranges rather than in traditional classes, have cheered residents of retirement homes and have picked up garbage on beaches. A newspaper clipping of “Top 10 Simple Things to Save the Earth” and a brochure outlining “Twelve Steps to Personal and Planetary Health” adorn the bulletin board in the school lobby.

The annual Jogathon/Bikeathon school fund-raiser netted $4,800 in March, and pupils decided to start giving money to community groups. The student council granted $1,200 to the Westside Children’s Center for playground equipment, but not before grilling the center staff to see that the funds would directly benefit children rather than adult bureaucrats.

“The school is not a self-contained classroom,” Pelcyger said.

“We live here, the (Ocean Park Community) Center is here, this is what we do,” Arlen said.

With the lunch program, she said, “the kids are aware, and they’re aware on a continuing basis. Community service has to be an ongoing commitment, not just when you get the guilt.”