Grade schools across Manitoba have been beefing up their school nutrition programs this fall thanks to newly allocated provincial funding.
To make good their promise to help remove barriers to childhood learning, the province announced an additional $30 million in nutritional funding earlier this year.
The new funding is being rolled out in three streams.
The first $15 million has been distributed directly to school divisions to help them establish or enhance their nutritional meal programming. Student enrolment numbers and socioeconomic factors govern the differing division allotments.
An additional $6 million is being allocated to individual public schools where the socioeconomic need is markedly high.
Finally, $9 million in grant money is available for nutrition programming on an application basis. This funding may be used to support family outreach initiatives and after-school, summer, and school break programs.
DSFM
Joel Mangin, Director of Student Services with the division scolaire Franco-Manitobaine (DSFM), says he is excited for provincial funding that will help enhance his division’s existing nutrition programs.
Even so, he hopes parents understand that a universal food program means better all-around access, not food for everyone.
“I hope nobody has the illusion that every kid is going to get fed lunch every day, because that’s not what this is,” says Mangin.
In DFSM, the bulk of the new funding will continue to be funnelled towards three Winnipeg schools which exist in areas of higher socioeconomic need.
“We already had a more robust meal plan that we were just funding ourselves for our really high-needs schools,” says Mangin. “We provided about 200 lunches through a contract with a caterer who assembles lunches and we just deliver them to those three schools every single day.”
Even so, each school in the division received a survey last year allowing DSFM to assess need. If, at any time throughout the school year, schools indicate a need for additional food assistance, Mangin says the division will continue to provide accordingly.
“We’ve got some schools that have basically said, ‘All of our kids have lunches. We don’t have any kids that come to school starving,’” Mangin says. “They know their kids. When you have 100 kids in the school, you have a pretty good idea [about their situation]. Not like the students that are in some of our schools in the city where [the school meal] is the only meal they eat in a day.”
While the division could have chosen to allocate portions of the provincial funding to the creation of cafeterias, kitchens, or food cupboards, DSFM schools have little space to spare for such amenities.
So to provide food services throughout the division, DSFM will be contracting with Sysco Canada, which makes regular food deliveries to each school.
In the majority of schools, this will entail providing shelf-stable foods which are easily stored and doled out to students as need demands.
“Some of our schools in Winnipeg, where these kids don’t really have access to fresh fruits and vegetables and we know that it’s going to be consumed, they’ll get that,” Mangin adds.
In terms of the grant funding available through Child Nutrition Council of Manitoba (CNCM), Mangin says individual schools need to apply for that on their own—and some of them are.
Schools like La Broquerie, for example, offer their students a daily breakfast program. In cases like these, Mangin suspects they’ll be applying for the additional funding.
“The government’s been very good with saying, ‘We just want you guys to feed kids and we’re going to work on this together,’” says Mangin.
HSD
Vice superintendent Colin Campbell of the Hanover School Division (HSD) says that his division benefited to the tune of $575,000 from the new provincial nutrition funding.
A portion of the funding will be used to ensure that every school in the division has a store of fresh produce available to students every day.
“As part of this program, each school will have fresh fruit and vegetables readily available during the school day,” states an HSD news release. “This is intended for students needing a healthy snack to help them concentrate and participate fully in their learning. We understand that access to nutritious food is essential for physical and mental well-being, and we are committed to ensuring that no child goes hungry while in our schools.”
Additionally, HSD says that they’ll continue to partner with a local not-for-profit organization called Soup’s On. For the past two decades, Soup’s On has been providing lunches for children in need of a meal.
Soup’s On is a Steinbach-based soup kitchen which provides two free evening meals per week to individuals and families in need of food support. The school lunch program is a supplementary program to the soup kitchen model.
“As Soup’s On continues to serve the needs of the community, we have seen other challenges arise—specifically in families with school-aged children,” the Soup’s On website states. “Our Lunch Program created a way to expand our abilities to provide further support for those with food insecurities in the southeast. By partnering with local schools, we have been able to ensure that hundreds of children have the nourishment they need to grow and learn in a way that honours and respects their dignity.”
According to Campbell, all three of Niverville’s schools will benefit from Soup’s On services this school year.
SRSD
According to Teresa Hampton, assistant superintendent at the Seine River School Division (SRSD), a grant of $266,000 was received from the province for nutrition programming for this school year.
Hampton says, prior to this funding announcement, that all of their schools were running their own independent nutrition programs. Many of them were receiving some level of government funding which they had to apply for.
For some schools, the funding allowed them to provide their students with grab-and-go snack options such as granola bars or fruit. In other schools, like those in Ste. Anne and St. Norbert, a full breakfast program complemented the grab-and-go snacks.
The new provincial funding allows SRSD to disburse money to schools based on their enrolment and socioeconomic need. Schools that would like to implement a breakfast program, she says, may be able to do that now.
It may also be used to provide supplementary wages for staff to get involved more fully in the implementation of their various nutrition programs.
Still, Hampton says, the money only goes so far so volunteers and student helpers will still be needed.
Next week, the division will hold a meeting where they’ll explore outside catering options which could take pressure off school staff.
“Right now, [school staff] is having to order, prep, deliver, and clean up,” Hampton says. “We could eliminate a lot of that. It would just be the delivery and pickup that they’d have to manage within the school, which is considerably less [time-consuming] than running the whole program.”
