A healthy, delicious and nourishing meal for every student in Manitoba. It may sound like a dream, but some educators in Brandon hope this dream comes true when the New Democratic government makes its school funding announcement in early 2024.
“I think it would be a difference maker for a lot of schools,” said Katherine MacFarlane, principal of Prairie Hope High School, a Brandon School Division alternative education school that has received the Child Nutrition Council (CNC) grant the last two years.
“We know that if we can normalize this kind of support across all schools, in our province, then we’re reducing barriers, and we’re providing more of an equity model around accessing nutrition,” MacFarlane said. “Anytime we can do that, that’s going to serve our students best because we don’t want them to not have access (to a meal) if they need it,” she said.
(Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun)
“We know (nutritious food) is important. We know it’s expensive. And there’s only so much that schools can do within their own budgets. So, any kind of support that we can receive like (the NDP funding) is beneficial to our students.”
Education Minister Nello Altomare confirmed to the Sun in an interview earlier this month that the NDP will come through on a promise to fund school nutrition programs for all Manitoba schools at a cost of $30 million.
“Yes, that’s going to happen. Yes, absolutely,” Altomare said. “I think we can start quite early with (provincewide school nutrition) because we already have the (CNC) providing a lot of leadership there.”
Altomare said the NDP school funding announcement will come in late January or early February 2024. “Some of the really quick things we can do is that we can help the (CNC) with their wait list and knock that down so that we can get rolling on this.”
The CNC provides grants and guidelines to schools that apply to purchase nutritious food and small food prep items. The grants allow the schools to supplement funding with other community contributions to provide anything from breakfast and lunch to snack programs. The CNC currently provides funding for 321 programs across the province.
Clara Birnie, community dietitian and program grants manager at CNC, said the requests from schools for a nutrition grant grew substantially in 2020 and forced the CNC to create a wait list. Today there are 59 schools in Manitoba on the CNC wait list, the highest it has ever been. Westman schools make up about 10 per cent of the CNC wait list.
“I think it would be great if funding was available to all schools in Manitoba,” Birnie said. “Because we know there’s usually a need for food in every school, and there certainly is a need for supporting nutrition in every school.”
While the CNC funding helps schools, she added, it can only provide about 17 per cent of the total food cost, with schools supplementing their nutrition programs with outside community funding.
At Prairie Hope High School, two-thirds of the students are aged 18 to 21 and working toward their high school diplomas. The school also offers English as a Second Language (ESL) to new immigrants. Many of the students also juggle adult responsibilities in addition to their education.
MacFarlane said the combined funding from the CNC and Brandon Food for Thought allows her and her staff to offer a rotating lunch menu, with three hot lunches, like stews and soups, and two cold lunches, like sandwiches and fresh vegetables, during the week. They also have snacks on hand like fresh fruit, granola bars and smoothies.
“Even for you and I, the difference in cost when we’re at the grocery store is significant and the cost of living is high,” MacFarlane said. “So, for us to be able to bridge some of that by providing nutritious food in the school is certainly an effort worth making on our part, knowing that young people learn best when their brains and their bodies are fed.”
Crocus Plains Regional Secondary School is one BSD school that has applied for and is waiting for a CNC grant. Principal Bryce Ridgen said the school of nearly 1,300 students has a canteen and a culinary program where students can purchase food, but not every student is able to do that.
“We have students with diverse needs, and we want to be able to provide all students with fresh, healthy, nutritious food.”
Ridgen said he has a team ready and waiting to implement the school’s nutrition program, adding that he sees the need from students of all ages and he is looking forward to the NDP’s school funding announcement.
MacFarlane said the CNC and Brandon Food for Thought provide wonderful support but also education and guidelines for the schools around nutrition. That support allows them to model and pass healthy nutrition ideas onto students.
“Sometimes we have students ask for recipes,” she said. And ultimately that’s the goal, especially when you’re working with young adults — it’s like you’re teaching someone to fish, right? And you’re passing on recipes that are manageable for them and things that they could do that would be healthy and nutritious … because we know that that helps them as they become independent adults.”