Putting food on the table

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This article was published 05/11/2015 (3813 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Teachers know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Staff at John Pritchard School recognized that many of their students were coming to school hungry, and last year decided to start a breakfast program to address those needs.

“We’d never attempted something like that before,” said Todd Schulz, a resource teacher at John Pritchard who helped get the program off the ground last November. “When we started we had 15 to 20 students coming through the program daily. Now we’re up to 33.”

Taking their cue from other schools running breakfast programs in the River East-Transcona School District, Schulz said the staff at John Pritchard were committed to running their program five days a week for any child in need of a nutritious meal.

“We realized we couldn’t do it every odd day, we had to consistently do them,” Ashley Kisil said. Kisil, the learning assistance room teacher at John Pritchard, runs the program with Schulz and guidance counsellor Shanley Harper-Nick.

John Pritchard’s breakfast program is partially funded by the Child Nutrition Council of Manitoba, a charitable organization that supports school breakfast, snack and lunch programs in Manitoba.

“They also provide lots of support and workshop opportunities,” Schulz added.

However, Schulz said the funding they receive from CNCM only accounts for approximately half their projected program costs of the breakfast for the year.

“It’s tough for us. We know those kids aren’t necessarily eating,” Schulz said. “North Kildonan seems to be an area that is a bit of an empty zone in terms of community services. I think it’s a challenge for a lot of these families to get access to these services.”

When kids are hungry, Harper-Nick said they can be “angry, irritable, distracted, and tired.”
According to the CNCM website, “ensuring that children have access to healthy food choices is an important part of a supportive and healthy eating environment in schools.” Schulz, Kisil and Harper-Nick said they’ve seen first-hand the positive results of providing hungry kids with a meal to start the day.

“There’s a decrease in behaviours, and they’re able to focus on material more,” Kisil said.
“We track office referrals,” Schulz added. “Since we started the program, there has been a change in the number of office referrals.”

Schulz said that they’re also working hard to eliminate or minimize the possible stigma of relying on the breakfast program for meals.

“They come in with their peers,” he said. “It’s a soft landing, a nice calm way to start the day.”

Last year, John Pritchard used “pizza day” sales and school dance donations to cover extra costs of the breakfast program. But Schulz said even those funds are stretched thin. He said he’s hoping that community groups might be interested in partnering with the school to help cover the costs.

“We’re feeding a large number of students, and we’re looking for donations of money or supplies to keep the program going,” he said.

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