Underfunded school serving children chili from food bank for breakfast, MLA alleges
Bernadette Smith wants funding for supplementary meal programs
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/11/2017 (2885 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
One inner-city school is so overwhelmed providing a breakfast for children it’s serving canned chili from the food bank, MLA Bernadette Smith said Friday.
“Several schools in my constituency struggle to provide breakfast and lunch,” the New Democrat from Point Douglas told the legislature. “Research shows children need a healthy breakfast in the morning so they can concentrate in school.”
The available funding, donations, teacher time and community and parent volunteers only go so far, Smith said.
“They have been forced to use food banks, which means the kids are eating canned chili for breakfast,” she said of one school she wouldn’t name.
Increasingly, schools have been providing breakfasts and sometimes lunches for kids who would otherwise go to school hungry. The program has spread from the lowest-income areas into dozens of Winnipeg School Division schools and to schools in other divisions throughout the city.
Smith called on the province to provide specific funding to help support the supplementary meal programs.
Education Minister Ian Wishart reminded Smith the NDP had been in power for 17 years without providing what she’s now asking of his government.
“The NDP stood quietly aside while we became the child poverty capital of Canada,” Wishart said, acknowledging that it is a growing need.
“It is certainly a joint responsibility. We work with the school divisions and they work with the communities.”
Smith said later that the schools have asked not to be publicly identified.
“Their breakfast program is underfunded. They also rely heavily on volunteers; they’re scrambling all the time,” she said, adding schools have started partnering with businesses for help.
The Atlas Pawn Shop is the latest business to donate to the program, she said.
It costs about $7,000 a year to provide breakfast for 250 children in a school, and about $17,500 for lunch, she said.
Winnipeg School Division officials could not be reached Friday.
nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca