Wyatt Dubyak, 3, from Butler sprays people with a hose the City of Butler firefighters brought down to Butler's first Stuff A Bus to benefit Butler School District's kids weekend backpack program Tuesday.

Butler's first Stuff A Bus donation drive filled two school buses with food Tuesday, to kick-start this coming school year's weekend backpack program.

For the past several years, the Butler School District's backpack program struggled to collect enough food during the first few months of the school year. The program sends children home with most of its reserves at the end of school year, and donations take a while to pick back up in August, organizers said.

Kim Thomas, the backpack program's founder, said the program spent about $20,000 from the Golden Tornado Scholastic Foundation budget on food in the first four months of the previous school year. The money comes from various sources, such as grants and donations.

This year the program's supporters organized Tuesday's event as a summertime supplement to the program.

At the event's end Thomas and other organizers took stock of the new food and counted cash donations. The event raised about $2,000 and enough food was donated to support the backpack program for about a month.

Meghan Lucas, a fourth-grade teacher at Emily Brittain Elementary School, came up with the concept for Stuff A Bus.

“We wanted to stuff something and we thought, what better than a school bus,” Lucas said.

One hour into the donation drive, organizers had already called to bring in a second, full-sized bus. The first vehicle filled on Tuesday was a short bus.

The group wanted simple food products that only require basic preparation, such as cups of noodles or boxed macaroni. The idea is to send home only food that can be used on its own without families needing to buy other ingredients.

Every Friday during the school year, teachers discretely place bags of the food in about 380 to 400 students' backpacks. Any family that says they have a need is put on the list for the program.About 40 percent of students in the Butler School District receive free or reduced price lunches, according to Brian White, superintendent.The event took place on North Washington Street between the Butler YMCA and Emily Brittain Elementary School.The event had about 30 local businesses and organizations donating manpower, cash and food to the drive. Youth volunteers collected food donations from at least 20 businesses throughout the day.Thomas, a special-education teacher at McQuistion Elementary School, said she started the backpack program “because we saw such a need for it.” She considered Tuesday's event a success.“We are ecstatic,” Thomas said. “This will be perfect to start the year.”

Rachel Falk, above, a reading specialist teacher at Center Township Elementary School, loads up a bus on North Washington Street.