Principals pack food as Covid effects bite

Isolation, sickness, rising cost of living hurting many families

School principals are parcelling up and delivering food packages as Covid-19 isolation and sickness leaves children of the Hauraki-coromandel hungry for their regular free lunches.

The morning Weet-bix at breakfast club and free lunch provided by the healthy school lunches programme at schools on the Hauraki Plains, Waihi and Paeroa are the difference between some families being fed or going hungry, principals say.

“There’s usually very little left of the kai that’s delivered to school because often there’s little in their lunchbox and I’m seeing a huge amount of food being consumed by our kids,” said one principal.

In Waikato, 24,577 students at 118 schools receive The Ka Ora, Ka Ako healthy school lunches every day in a programme rolled out last year to reduce food insecurity.

Principals Chris Patel and Moana Te Moananui Ikinofo have rolled their sleeves up to make deliveries.

Goods include Ka Ora Ka Ako school lunches from the Ministry of Education, care parcels and donations from charity Kidscan, local churches, businesses and individual donors, and organisations like Te Korowai, the Hauraki Maori Trust Board and Tirohia Marae.

Waihi College — which is also sending children home with uneaten school lunches for their siblings — is trialling using unused raw ingredients to create meals for isolating families.

The school has an agreement with the Salvation Army to take any uneaten school lunches and redistribute them to needy families in the community, or they are sometimes given to another local primary school.

“It’s a shame that we have to, but everyone knows you can’t educated hungry kids.”

One school had up to threequarters of its families away sick in recent weeks, while staff absences at Waihi College led the school to roster home learning days for year groups.

Principals say Covid isolation and sickness on top of rising costs in rent, petrol and food is stressing families.

An example was a family forced to shift into emergency housing half an hour’s drive from their school because they couldn’t afford the only alternative — a rental in Thames that was $650 a week.

“It’s tough out there for families,” says Kopuarahi Principal Chris Patel. “I know for a fact a lot of our families are under stress.”

She believed there was a misconception that a lot of people “needed to get off their backsides and help themselves”.

“If you’re a family with two people on a minimum wage . . . middle income is now in a really precarious situation and people don’t seem to realise that.