Conyers, Georgia — An elementary school here put a free grocery store inside the building, and absences dropped 43 percent.
C.J. Hicks Elementary, in Rockdale County east of Atlanta, opened the no-cost store after a ribbon-cutting on December 10, 2025, in partnership with Goodr and Kaiser Permanente. Since then, school records show total absent days fell from 1,286 to 733 — a 43 percent drop. Kaiser Permanente’s newsroom cites the same figures, explicitly framed as what the school reports.
It works like a store, not a handout line. Families sign in at the front office on Tuesdays and Thursdays and pick what they need — fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy, frozen foods, breakfast staples, juice and snacks — at no cost. The district said the store would serve about 200 families a month. A food bank also visits the school.
The store serves a school where most students are Black and nearly all qualify for free lunch.
Principal Anthony Browning told FOX 5 that when the school pulls up its stats, absences are down about 43 percent from last year since the grocery store arrived. The numbers are the school’s own records, not an independent study — organizers believe the store helped, and other factors could play a part.
Dana Cureton, the school’s parent liaison, told FOX 5 that some families see a food pantry as “the low,” but the store gives them choices. Joyce Towner Williams of Goodr said families get “that access and that choice in their shopping with dignity”.
Goodr is an Atlanta-based food waste and hunger-relief company founded by Jasmine Crowe-Houston. The company has done this before: it opened a free grocery store at Ronald McNair Middle School in Atlanta in 2021, in a partnership with the rapper Gunna, and another inside the Fairmount Heights library in Prince George’s County, Maryland, this year.
The idea underneath it is simple: feed the family, and the kid shows up. If your school has something like this — or needs it — tell us.
Drafted by News Observed Editorial AI, human reviewed and published.