There were smiles a plenty to go around at the Auburn Food Bank at the tallying of the totals for the fourth annual Auburn School District all-school food drive.

All told, the Feb. 22-to-March 5 effort, which pits schools against each other in a friendly competition, brought in 51,680 pounds of food and $15,723.47.

Though the numbers were slightly down from the 56,568 pounds and $18,869.30 students raised in 2009, Auburn Food Bank Director Debbie Christian couldn’t have been more delighted.

“This year’s numbers started in slowly to the point that we thought the donations would be way down. But as the final numbers all came together, we are excited to report just a slight decrease from last year,” Christian said. “And with this economy and so many other donations leaving the states for other countries, we are excited about the results.”

“It restocks our shelves,” said Kayla Sargent, food bank coordinator and volunteer director. “It was awesome, much better than we thought we were going to do because of the economy.”

Here are the first-place winners in each category (high school, middle school, elementary school):

• Auburn Mountainview High School, 4,421 pounds and $628.68; Olympic Middle School, 7,148 pounds and $1840.88; and Hazelwood Elementary, 8,024 pounds and $486.90.

“I cannot tell you how wonderful the support of the Auburn students is,” Christian said. “This means so much to us to see what a wonderful group of students can do.”

Christian called the students “the envy of other food banks throughout the state.”