Psstt, pass it along.

Word is that Auburn School District might be the only one in the country that does an all-school food drive to benefit a local food bank.

So mark your calendars because the annual drive, Feb. 27 to March 9, is coming up fast.

Within each school level – elementary, middle and high school – schools compete to collect the most weight in food and dollars.

At the end of the two-week competition, the Auburn Food Bank weighs it all. Every dollar that comes in counts as one pound of food. The winning school in each category gets the Traveling Trophy. Within each elementary school, classrooms compete to bring in the most items. The prize — the classroom’s own in-school traveling trophy.

Competition can be fierce. Last year Hazelwood Elementary School Principal Sally Colburn promised her students that if the could collect a certain amount of food, she and her desk would work out on the lawn one day. They came through. So did Coburn.

“The message that we hope filters down, in addition to the competition, is that you are helping your community,” said Debbie Christian, director of the Auburn Food Bank. “This is a way for the kids to try to understand that their community needs their support.”

Last year students gathered 53,607 pounds of food and collected $13,270 in donations.

But does it really make a difference? Boy, does it ever, Christian said with a laugh.

“Oh my, that amount of food, supplemented by what we get on a regular basis, will take us clear through June,” Christian said. “So yeah, it’s a big deal to us to have this all-school food drive happen.”

Former Food Bank Director Jack Laverty and former Food Bank board member Jeani Rottle started it all eight years ago. Rottle, a member of the advisory board, coordinates the drive today.

“It is a two-week food drive during the non-holiday season because by this time the food bank’s shelves are pretty empty,” Rottle said. “And we do it the last week of February and the first week of March because we can get matching funds from the Feinstein Foundation in New York.”

That is, the food bank becomes eligible for a proportional grant from the foundation. All the food poundage that comes in can be listed in a report and sent to the foundation. That could help the food bank pick up more dollars. Last year it meant an extra $1,200.

“They’ve got some kind of proportional scale they use,” Christian said of the foundation. “It’s not a dollar-for-dollar match, but it’s definitely very helpful.”

Rottle approached her contacts in each school last year and asked them to go out into the community and find a business, organization or church to sponsor a school during the food drive and do a bit of a drive of their own. Christian will deliver barrels to whomever sponsors the school, weigh what’s collected and pick it up. What that organization brings in will be credited to the school it sponsors.

“If you have a connection to a school, maybe a grandchild goes there, perhaps a husband or wife works there, maybe you know somebody there, maybe you don’t know anybody but you used to go there and want to support them, that’s what we’re looking for this year,” Rottle said.

“My goal, some day, is to bring in 100,000 pounds of food. I know we can do it, but it is going to take the community’s help,” Rottle said. “I want this to become a whole community effort.”