This is the shortest and least expensive  Wish List I’ve ever put up – 5 items, 3 to 10 of each, ranging in price from $6.98 to $14.99 – but it is perhaps the most important.

It’s about getting very cheap but healthy snacks and nutritious food to a small number of children who don’t have enough to eat: mixed fruit snacks, apple juice, big granola bars, instant oatmeal, and macaroni and cheese lunch or dinner.

In the morning, before the first bell rings, a number of students at Bishop Maginn High School – some refugees, some poor inner-city kids – show up and wait patiently outside their homeroom teacher’s doors before the other children show up.

Some are silent and shy, some are eager. All of them are hungry.

Sometimes there are a half dozen, sometimes a dozen. The teachers bring bags of food with them to school each morning. The teachers suspect others are hungry, but they never ask for food.

So tonight, a new Wish List, the Bishop Maginn High School Healthy Snacks and Lunch Wish List.

When the teachers shop for their own groceries, they always buy something for the hungry children, who have not had breakfast and may not get lunch either.

Many of their families are desperately poor, fighting to keep their apartments and electricity on, there is sometimes no money left.

The teachers buy this food out of their own pockets.

Bishop Maginn is a private school, they are entitled to no federal aid money or children’s food support. Almost all of the federal aid programs to refugee families have been cut by the current administration.

The students at the school pay for their hot lunches if they have the money. If they don’t, they try to bring sandwiches or eat crackers or try to borrow some food from their friends.

The school has no funds to feed them lunch without payment.

Or they go hungry.

(The teachers among you reading the blog know this, but some people don’t. Sociologists and child advocacy groups believe that one in seven children in this, the richest country on the earth,  do not know where their next meal is coming from and that between 13 and 16 million American children struggle with hunger each year, and lack the means to get nutritious food on a regular basis.)

One boy at the school is heartbreaking to watch. He devours the apple Sue Silverstein brings him and eats his granola bar like a wolf.  On cold days, she brings an instant oatmeal cup. At lunch, a Macroni and cheese dinner and some apple juice.

A girl looks wan and falls asleep in class. Her family is loving, they just have no money.

Another teacher told me about one sophomore who lives with a different relative on a different sofa every night. The teachers believe he has no permanent room of his own.  He is often hungry.

They are careful to feed him regularly.

I’ve just learned about this in the past few days, it helps to get to know a place.

This morning, I met with Principal Mike Tolan and Sue Silverstein, the theology and art teacher at the school. We talked about how the Army Of Good might help.

Mike says there are a lot of hungry children at Bishop Maginn. But we have to stay small and focused. I want to be sensitive to the children, but also to the people who send money for these good deeds.

So here’s my idea, which Sue and Mike both liked and approved of.

We just put up a very short and inexpensive Bishop Maginn Healthy Healthy Lunch And Snack Wish List so we can help the teachers feed these hungry children at least for the next few weeks. (Thanks, Sue Silverstein, you are an angel, I’ve seen the wings.)

The refugee children never complain or ask for anything, but the teachers can tell who is hungry, and who is restless and always tired.

This is sensitive, and I believe it needs to be handled thoughtfully and discreetly.

We don’t want to embarrass these children or call attention to them by shipping truckloads of food to the school. We don’t want to overload the school with a ton of food packages.

I’ll give the school $300 in cash immediately from my Mansion/Refugee Fund, to be spread among the teachers, so they can get some food right away. We are also putting up the Wish List for now. If we need more food or need it more frequently, I’ll post that on the blog, or we’ll put up another Wish List.

There are so many poor kids at Bishop Maginn, we can’t alter their lives, and we don’t have limitless resources. But I think we can easily fill some of their bellies with warm and nutritious food.

I believe in working on a small and inexpensive scale. Let’s see what happens.

Please don’t send any additional food without contacting me first, [email protected].

If you prefer to avoid Amazon (as some do) or are uncomfortable online and wish to send support for this plan to me directly, you can do so via Paypal, [email protected] or by check, Jon Katz, Mansion/Refugee Fund, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

Please mark any payment “Healthy Snacks.”

I will convert any donations into cash – much simpler for the school and the teachers, and no bureaucracy in the middle to delay things.

If you need the school’s address for Amazon, it is Bishop Maginn High School, 75 Park Avenue, Albany, N.Y., 12202,

I think the Quaker Oatmeal cups and Macaroni and Cheese dinners are important, they are warm and sustaining food. The list was compiled by the teachers, based on what the students like and what the teachers feel is good for them.

The items on the list are Kraft Original Macaroni & Cheese Dinners, 13 out of 15 left (two bought already); Quaker Instant Oatmeal Variety Pack, $14.99, 3 left (two sold already); Quaker Big Chew Chewy Granola Bars, large size, $12.81 for 12 bars, need 8 out of 10, (two sold already); Apple & Eve Juice Variety Pack, 32 count, eight left (two sold already); Welch’s Fruit Snacks, Mixed Fruit, pack of 20, need eight packs, (two sold already.)

You can see the  Healthy Meals And Snacks Wish List here.

(The photo is of Zinnia, arriving at Bishop Maginn High School this morning. She seems quite comfortable there.)