Lines of cars wrapped around Sonoji Sakai Intermediate School Friday as families drove up to pick up learning materials for students, along with meals for the week.

Principal Drew Crandall and other school staff, braved the rain to direct traffic and make sure families got what they needed.

Many other local schools have been going through similar processes to start the school year, since student learning is taking place from home via the internet.

“This is our second time doing materials pickup,” Crandall said. “We did our first one a few weeks before school started. This week is particularly busy because we have food pickup going on at the same time. Also all the students are picking up their Sakai Reads books.”

Sakai has become Bainbridge Island School District’s’ “go-to” location for weekly meal pickup because it has the largest kitchen of all the schools in the district.

“We are so appreciative of our families and everything they are doing to support us right now,” Crandall said. “The home and school partnership is always important, but never more than right now. Today’s successful material pickup is just another example of the strong support we are grateful to get from our families.”

Crandall explained that Sakai Reads is an annual school-wide program centered around a specific theme.Students can select books that interest them from within the list provided by staff with the goal of having a school-wide discussion about the books later on.

This year’s theme is multiculturalism, with a list of 10 books for students to choose from that tell stories of Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants and many more.