Nova Scotia lets nutritious school lunch program perish

We’d like to echo Jenny Osburn’s plea and join the demand for holistic policies when it comes to school lunches for the children in Nova Scotia.

Osburn, a successful Kings County entrepreneur and author of cookbooks, has worked tirelessly over several years to set up a wholesome lunch program in Kings County schools. She sourced local ingredients, trained cafeteria workers, and together they served meals that children were happy to line up for.

Parents, schools, and Kings County council are fully behind these efforts, which include a policy that every child gets fed without shame. Provincial policies actually exist to address that last point, but the province has never provided additional funding or directives on how to achieve this.

Listening to a presentation to Kings County council last year by Jenny and others, we were all amazed at what was accomplished in some Kings County schools, yet dismayed how dismal lunches look at most other schools.

This is due to the following facts: School kitchens, built and equipped with public dollars, are really only available to “paying customers” (contradicting “official” policies).

Cafeteria workers are paid minimum wage, and not paid when schools are closed for whatever reason. Time allotment to prepare and deliver lunch for an entire school of several hundred is so minimal that they are forced to cut corners and mostly serve fast and cheap food. In addition, their hours are cut when sales drop. It’s a vicious cycle that’s hard to escape, because boring lunches with no nutritional value are not supported by most parents.

Rather than spending our tax dollars on local and real food, paying the cooks fair wages, the Department of Education prefers to line up behind processed-food companies, trying to tell us that the kids don’t like real food. Jenny and colleagues proved the opposite; local farmers and businesses were proud to support the program; sales went up despite a no-shame policy of “pay what you can.”

The facts presented at the Kings County council meeting were so convincing that it seemed only logical for the province to follow some of those recommendations, or at least include people from the front line in the discussion.

Of course, the Mcneil government did neither. As has been their practice throughout their undemocratic, single-minded “reign,” the Liberals did what they have done in most of their departments, be it forestry, health, mining, and with Owls Head provincial park. Without ever consulting front-line workers, supporting principals or parents, they created their own new and unimaginative menu of mostly processed fast food. Gone are the great and well-liked salad bars, as well as other menu choices made from local ingredients. Instead of following a great example and raising the quality of school lunches provincewide, they instead imposed a lower standard on all — no exceptions!

At the once-participating Kings County schools, sales have dropped again and kids receive food with poor nutritional value. Cafeteria workers are still paid minimum wage, and their hours are cut when sales go down.

The child poverty rate in Nova Scotia is 25 per cent, but, as before, schools are given no funding or directives to ensure that no child goes hungry on a school day.

Parents and grandparents: let’s work together and convince the next government to improve on those issues.