Some of the 100 backpacks donated by members of the Church of the Apostles, in Coventry, for distribution to youngsters in the West Warwick public schools, sit in the lobby of the church.

Photo courtesy of the Church of the Apostles

WEST WARWICK — Some needy students will be able to carry their books in style thanks to a donation of 100 backpacks and supplies to the local school district by a nearby church.

For the second consecutive year, the Church of the Apostles, in Coventry, has donated backpacks and supplies for children in the West Warwick public schools. This year, the church was able to donate 100 backpacks. The district had hoped for 200.

“If other churches in the area joined us, we would be able to meet all of the need,” said Cathryn J. Morgan, outreach deacon for the church. “It’s important for the churches to help the community, including the schools, and it is important the children in the schools know that the church cares about them.”

Other churches, indeed, are getting the same idea, said Laurent E. Lamothe, director of human resources for the School Department. Sacred Heart Church, in West Warwick, yesterday delivered 10 boxes of supplies to the School Department, Lamothe said. The donations — notebooks, glue, crayons, folders, pens, pencils and erasers and rulers — were distributed to Wakefield Hills Elementary School and Greenbush Elementary School, he said.

The donations come at a time when residents are feeling the squeeze from higher food, gas and utility prices, leaving little money for extra expenses. According to the National Retail Federation, a trade industry group, the average family will spend $594.24 on school supplies — a roughly $31 increase over last year’s spending. In all, the organization estimates $20.1 billion will be spent on back-to-school supplies, not counting college students.

That kind of spending on paper and pencils will be hard to fathom for some local parents. In West Warwick, more than half of all families received food stamps in 2006, according to Rhode Island KIDS COUNT, a children’s policy and advocacy organization. About 18 percent of all families in the town live below the poverty threshold set by the government.

The demonstrated need of the community led the Church of the Apostles to ask members to make a donation, Morgan said. The church sets up a giving tree in its vestibule — where members can take a tag from the tree with a child’s grade and gender written on it. It’s up to the individual member to fill a backpack with age-appropriate supplies and bring it back to the church. The church also used money from its outreach ministry to purchase supplies, Morgan said.

Forty backpacks will be given to students at John F. Horgan Elementary School, and 50 to students at Maisie E. Quinn Elementary School. Ten backpacks will be given to sixth graders at Deering Middle School, Lamothe said.

He said the backpacks were given to principals and social workers at the schools who will reach out to students they know could benefit the most from them. The hope is to get the backpacks into the children’s hands today — the first day of school, he said.

The 300-member church, which sits just over the town line in Coventry, originally began collecting backpacks to go to the Artic Mission, a faith-based agency on Main Street in Arctic. But when Morgan called last August to offer the donations, she said she was told they’d already received backpacks from another donor. So Morgan called the West Warwick School Department and started a conversation that became the bud of a relationship between the two groups.

The church donated 50 backpacks that year, and over the winter it gave students hand-knitted mittens, scarves and hats. It donated $2,000 to the district to support field trips for special-needs students and to provide warm-up suits for the West Warwick-Coventry Wildcats Special Olympics team.

“I can’t tell you why they do it,” Morgan said of the church members, “but they’ve been very motivated to do what they’ve done. We’re very generous people and we believe we should be working in the community.”

tbuford@projo.com