“We have two boys who never complain but they are sure thankful when they can get meatballs, mashed potatoes and carrots.”
A year ago the New Westminster school district was serving an average of 162 subsidized hot lunches a day to children in 12 schools who were coming to school hungry with little or no food.
But this year that number has jumped to 281 — a 73 per cent increase — testament to what a cost-of-living crisis is doing to families living on or below the poverty line.
“It’s not a question of these children being able to do without. They can’t,” said Tanis Anderson, district vice-principal for early learning. “Often this lunch is the last meal some of them are getting in their day.”
Some children are going from one school meal to the next with nothing in-between?
“Yes. Sometimes children are away from school and so extra meals are left over. The principals are putting them in the backpacks of kids they know won’t have any dinner,” Anderson said. “We had a lot of families that were getting by, but with the increases in the cost of groceries, fuel and rent, they now need help,
“We know when you feed kids they are better-prepared to learn because they are not sitting at their desks hungry. They are better-regulated, will do better at school, won’t have behaviour challenges. There’s such a positive impact when we feed them,” she said.
Hot lunches include entrees such as lasagna, butter chicken, macaroni and cheese, and meatballs and mashed potatoes supplied by a catering company that charges from $5.75 to $6.75 a meal.
However, the school district is seeking $140,000 from The Vancouver Sun Children’s Fund to help pay for these meals as its food budget is unable to meet the increased demand. The meals are distributed to eight elementary schools, three middle schools and an alternative education program.
One of the schools being helped is Lord Kelvin Community School on Hamilton Street. Principal Ken Millard said about 46 kids receive a fully subsidized lunch and breakfast at the school.
“The majority of our neighbourhood is in a pretty challenging socio-economic part of the city. Many of our families are low-income, some are single parents and a lot are new Canadians and really trying to get their feet planted on the ground here.
“These are hardworking, responsible families but they struggle with getting enough food and with us being able to provide a hot lunch it makes such a difference in their lives,” said Millard.
He said some children would come to school with nothing to eat for lunch except “ a slice of bread with Nutella on it.”
“The biggest area of concern are the single mothers … who don’t have enough money to make lunches for their children or give them a decent breakfast.”
It’s not that they don’t want to, “they don’t have the means to do it.”
“We have two boys who never complain but they are sure thankful when they can get meatballs, mashed potatoes and carrots.”
As an example of the sort of poverty that the program is dealing with, Anderson relates an incident that can only be described as disturbing.
“We had a situation in one of our schools involving a new family — a mother and four children. They were all found sleeping outside the school because the mother couldn’t afford the bus fare to get back-and-forth from their home to the school,” she said.
Anderson said they lived in a small apartment some distance from the school so the mother and her two school-age children — the two others were too young — slept outside the school all night until the principal found them. The principal bought bus tickets, got the mother help from social services and had the children enrolled in the breakfast-and-lunch programs at the school, Anderson said.
“It’s hard to believe something like that could happen in 2022.”
By Gerry Bellett (gbellett@gmail.com)