ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Families preparing for the upcoming school year received free backpacks, school supplies and snacks Friday during the third annual Back to School Bash hosted by the Lehigh Conference of Churches.<\/p>\n
The event provided nearly 200 backpacks filled with school supplies to help families facing rising costs ahead of the new school year.<\/p>\n
“The community means everything for us. I think any way we can help is beneficial in a lot of different ways,” said Christopher Moran, director of development for the Lehigh Conference of Churches.<\/p>\n
Moran said the organization hopes the event eases some of the financial burden on parents while giving children the tools they need to start the school year prepared.<\/p>\n
As organizations like the Lehigh Conference of Churches work to help families at the local level, Senator Lisa Boscola is proposing legislation that would create a limited-time sales tax holiday on school supplies.<\/p>\n
“They could save a lot of money if we got rid of the sales tax just for like a two week period of time,” Boscola said.<\/p>\n
The proposed legislation is currently before the Senate Finance Committee. If the committee approves the bill, it will advance to the full Senate for consideration and a vote.<\/p>\n
The Back to School Bash is held annually, with Moran saying they plan to continue the event each year for as long as the community needs the support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Families preparing for the upcoming school year received free backpacks, school supplies and snacks Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,6290],"class_list":["post-261277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-easton-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}