Why kids want meals at school: ‘I don’t like seeing my friends hungry’

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When Vancouver teacher Brent Mansfield asked children why schools should serve meals, one student replied in a simple yet heartbreaking way: “I don’t like seeing my friends hungry.”

More than 1,000 youngsters from across Canada penned handwritten notes explaining the need for subsidized food in schools, which Mansfield delivered to Ottawa last November. While there, he jogged 200 times around the front lawn of the Parliament Buildings with a few local students by his side.

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The 30-kilometre run was meant to pressure the federal government into honouring its five-year-old commitment to create a $1 billion program to reduce the number of kids who are hungry in class and improve their chances of focusing on their education.

And it worked.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland came in June to Lord Roberts Elementary in Vancouver’s West End, where Mansfield teaches, to announce a new national school food program that the federal government says will augment existing school programs to feed up to 400,000 more Canadian elementary and secondary students annually.

Freeland’s speech quoted some of the students’ letters that were delivered to Ottawa and, after her press conference, Mansfield asked if his school could keep the national school food program placard that hung from the podium. She autographed it: “Thanks for making this happen, Lord Roberts.”

Mansfield, who created a popular lunch program that has expanded to other Vancouver schools, said his students felt “very proud” to see their advocacy turn into public policy.

“The fact that they know that we were part of contributing to this was pretty amazing,” he said.

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B.C.’s share of the federal money is expected to be $71.4 million over the next five years, beginning with about $7.4 million anticipated for this school year, B.C. Education Minister Rachna Singh told Postmedia. That money is in addition to provincial funding of $70 million a year from the Feeding Futures program that her ministry launched last year.

“I’m really excited about this next year because we now have the multiple levels of funding,” Mansfield said.

Even before the announcement of the federal money, there were signs of progress in this province: In 2021, 59 per cent of schools served meals or snacks to students. After Feeding Futures was launched during the last academic year, 87 per cent of schools had some type of food — breakfasts, lunches and/or snacks — available to students, Singh said.

Funding should be permanent, say advocates

Singh hopes the new federal funding will bolster these efforts at a time when rising grocery bills make it increasingly difficult for families to feed their children.

“I would say that the need for this program is at an all-time high. We know with the global inflation that many families are struggling … There are many students who come to the school hungry, and the only nutritious meal that they are getting is in the school system,” Singh said in an interview.

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“If the child is not properly fed, it really impacts their learning outcomes as well. So with our funding, we have been reaching out to approximately 20 per cent of the most vulnerable student population. We know the need is even higher, so I feel that this (federal) funding will really help fill those gaps.”

Although the provincial and federal funding is an excellent start, advocates say far more needs to be done to ensure parity in the quality and quantity of food dished up in each B.C. school district and that it reaches the most needy students free of charge.

Much more funding is required to achieve the long-term goal of delivering meals to every child in every school so they all have the best chance of learning.

“We always advocate for a move toward a progressive, universal system. So more money into that food program is definitely a good step in that direction,” said Stephanie Korolyk, with the B.C. chapter of the Coalition for Healthy School Food.

But the province’s program has only three years of funding and Ottawa’s has just five years. The coalition is lobbying to make the funding permanent.

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“There’s going to be that end date that’s looming that could fuel the uncertainty of more children being able to rely on food at school and not be learning while they’re hungry,” Korolyk said.

Singh said she is pushing to extend the provincial funding, but stopped short of promising it would happen. “As a government, we will be looking at all the options, like how we can take this funding further than the three years,” she said.

The $71.4 million that B.C. receives over the next five years from the federal program will be shared with the province’s 60 school districts in roughly the same way the provincial funding is divvied up, Singh said.

Provinces still have to sign agreements with Ottawa before details are released about exactly how the new federal money will be spent, but it is safe to assume the number of students fed in the future should rise, said Korolyk.

“Right now, B.C.’s goal is to feed 20 per cent of the hungriest students. Could we get it up to 50 per cent?” she asked of the long-term impact of the two government programs.

Record requests to Adopt-A-School program

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The Coalition for Healthy School Food represents 330 non-profit groups that for a decade have asked the provinces and Ottawa to develop a universal program that feeds students and teaches them about growing food, healthy eating and diverse culinary cultures.

More than two million children — one out of every four in this country — were food insecure in 2023, Statistics Canada reported.

A record number of requests for money to feed children flooded into The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School program in 2023, and demand is not expected to decline this year. The program sent more than $2.3 million to B.C. schools last year to assist children who arrived hungry and with little or no food for the rest of the day.

Since Adopt-A-School launched in 2011, almost $14 million donated by generous Vancouver Sun readers has gone to schools to help pay for breakfast and lunch programs, buy clothes or provide emergency help. Surrey and Vancouver — the two largest school districts in the province — received almost $1 million combined in 2023.

The federal money, Ottawa says, will help bolster school food programs that are already operating in provinces but are buckling under the weight of soaring food costs. And it will fund new initiatives for schools that do not serve meals. The federal government estimates its investment should save the average low-income family with two children up to $800 a year in grocery costs.

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When it comes to the provincial school food fund, the biggest school districts, not surprisingly, will receive the most money for the 2024/25 year. Nearly $9 million will go to Surrey, $5.6 million to Vancouver, and roughly $3 million each to Coquitlam, Burnaby, Central Okanagan and Langley.

The province’s allotment of funding, though, is not based on the size of the student population but on the number of children identified by each district as not having enough food at home. Therefore, the districts with the highest proportion of hungry kids will receive the most money per student.

An analysis by Postmedia data journalist Nathan Griffiths found, for example, the Stikine school district in northern B.C., which has 168 students, will receive $350,000, which breaks down to $2,083 per student; the Central Coast district in the Bella Coola Valley, with 202 students, will receive $1,732 per child; and the Vancouver Island West and Nisga’a districts, with just over 300 students each, will receive around $1,000 per child.

More affluent districts, such as West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Delta, Saanich and Richmond, will receive a little over $100 per student because there are fewer families living in poverty in those communities.

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B.C. school districts decide on their own how to spend the provincial funds based on the needs of their communities. Some started from scratch, while others had well established school food programs, Singh said.

Some schools have community gardens where the kids help with planting. Others partner with non-profits to create breakfasts or lunches, especially if they don’t have large kitchens. Some rely heavily on parent volunteers to co-ordinate the meals.

‘Chef, I’m hungry’

In the last school year in Vancouver, where several food programs already existed, the provincial funding paid for subsidized meals for an additional 491 vulnerable students, an increase of 15 per cent from the previous academic year, a VSB spokesperson said. The district anticipates 800 more students could receive meals this school year.

In Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows, the 30 schools work with outside organizations to provide food for up to 7,000 students. What each school offers varies, but typically breakfast and snacks are free while lunch costs $3.

In Langley, in addition to vulnerable students receiving food in schools, nearly 500 students receive food to take home every Friday to help their families get through the weekend.

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Donors, including The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School program, help the Surrey district serve breakfast to more than 1,500 vulnerable students at 61 schools, and lunch to 2,400 students at 35 schools. The school board says it needs more money, though, to feed all the children who don’t have enough food at home.

Chef and culinary arts teacher Nimmi Erasmus started a program last year at White Rock’s Semiahmoo Secondary, where her students cooked daily lunches for about 125 students, most of whom paid a low fee for the meals.

This fall, Erasmus is taking the program to Surrey’s Guildford Park Secondary, where free lunches will be provided to about 150 students identified by the district as being in need.

“Kids get that hands on culinary experience, but yet we’re also taking care of community,” she said.

And her proteges do not produce the stereotypical fare of high-school cafeterias. Rather than hot dogs or greasy fries, her students cook dishes such as seafood fettuccine or ravioli and desserts like cheesecake. They learn how to create gourmet meals for large groups using diverse menus that will appeal to a wide range of cultures, said Erasmus.

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“Different ethnicities are celebrated. We partake in almost every student’s background,” she said. “One day we’ll do Nigerian food, or one day we’ll do Thai food.”

Erasmus hopes the new federal investment will allow her program to expand to other Surrey schools.

“It just shocks me the amount of kids that have (said): ‘Chef, I’m hungry, I don’t have food, or this is what my family home life is.’ It’s incredible,” she said.

Variety of programs

In the last school year, half of B.C.’s public schools served both breakfast and lunch, while nearly three-quarters offered one or the other, said the education ministry. At some schools, meals were cooked on the premises, while at others they were prepared at external locations such as a community centre. Some schools hired caterers or partnered with non-profits to deliver meals.

When snacks were included in the subsidized food, about 130,000 students — or 22 per cent of students enrolled in public schools — received some type of food at school last year, the ministry said. This year’s goal is to provide proper meals to at least 20 per cent of students.

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Some districts used a portion of their provincial funding to buy equipment needed to cook, store or deliver meals, such as small appliances or dishes. A separate, $5-million provincial program has helped school districts to purchase refrigerated delivery vehicles and large kitchen appliances, and to pay for electrical upgrades to older kitchens, the ministry said.

By the end of July, two thirds of B.C.’s 60 school districts had hired a school food coordinator to oversee the provincial funding. Others are in the process of doing so, Singh’s ministry added.

Singh said Ottawa’s policies for its new school food fund mesh well with B.C.’s provincial program because they have similar goals, including a focus on first reaching the hungriest students before a long-term plan to ensure all kids have enough food to focus in class.

The success of the new federal program depends on several factors, the Canadian Association for Food Studies said in an opinion piece in the Vancouver Sun in April: schools having access to their own kitchen or one in the community; staff being properly trained to run these programs; local and sustainable food being used to make the meals, which must include a variety of ethnic food options; and evaluating whether it’s better to offer universal free programs or pay-what-you-can models.

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‘We need energy to play’

One month before Mansfield’s run in Ottawa last November, the determined teacher ran 200 laps around Lord Roberts Elementary — a 90-km, 12-hour feat to raise awareness about the dire need for meals in schools.

Today, he gives the new national school food program a positive review for including important aspects beyond ensuring more kids are fed, such as fostering connections to local agriculture.

Other countries that established school food programs long before Canada — we were the last in the G7 to do so — provide free meals daily to all students. It will take time to reach that type of a universal system, Mansfield said.

In the meantime, he hopes the federal cash infusion will mean more schools can adopt the popular LunchLAB program he runs at Lord Roberts, where Grade 6 and 7 students, with the help of volunteer chefs, cook meals two days a week for about 200 students. LunchLAB expanded to Norquay Elementary last year and will likely be adopted by another Vancouver school this year, he said.

So what was in those letters that helped convince the federal government to finally launch a national school food program after Mansfield delivered them to Ottawa?

“I can focus a lot better while not hungry,” a Grade 7 student wrote.

“Students are the future, and good food helps students learn better,” said another youngster.

“There are lots of kids,” penned a child in Grade 7, “that can’t afford food. And we need energy to play and get better grades.”

lculbert@postmedia.com

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