The Decibel - How grocery prices are affecting kids at school

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

School food programs in Canada are struggling to make ends meet right now. With the high price of food, it’s costing some programs as much as 25 percent more than previous years to keep running. And they’re seeing higher demand too – more children in need of a balanced meal.Caroline Alphonso spoke with programs across the country that are worried their funding won’t make it to the end of the school year. Today, she tells us what’s happening with school food programs, why they’re so important and what might be done to fix the situation.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at  [e-mail]

Bagels yesterday as well. So we had bagels in here. I just put the cream cheese in the fridge overnight. That's the sound of a grade one classroom at Cathy Weaver Elementary School in Hamilton, Ontario. Some of the families are struggling with feeding them, so I have parents come to me sometimes and just say, oh, we couldn't make a lunch today.

And then that's when we go to just the nutrition program. This is part of the school's daily food program. In Canada, around 1.4 million children live in food-insecure households, according to a report from the University of Toronto. And these programs are providing some kids with their only balanced meal for the day. But it's getting harder and harder

to keep these programs afloat. And some are worried that they won't make it to the end of the school year. Caroline Alfonso is the Globe's education reporter. She's here to tell us why these school food programs are struggling and what could change that. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Caroline, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me.

So you were at Kathy Weaver Elementary School in Hamilton to see their food program. Can you just start by telling me, what did you see? Sure. So Fred Lum, our photographer, and I visited Kathy Weaver in early March. You know, I had got a sense that food programs were struggling, and I really wanted to see what that was like and what that meant. So in my cupboard I always have some food too. So we went to Kathy Weaver which is a school in downtown Hamilton. Fred and I visited Lindsay Steve's grade one classroom. They have a significant part of their population that comes from low-income families. And then we use it to

like supplement if they come without food. And what happens in the morning? Is everybody eating a snack? Mostly, yeah. What are you finding? Are they not having breakfast in the morning, or they're just hungry? What is it? I think it's that they're not eating, maybe for time.

And so Kathy Weaver has two different food programs, but their main one, which we saw, was their snack program. It's a daily snack program that they run in their school. And so they feed about 500 kids. You know, we watched the program in action. So these, this big trolley, like these black trolleys going down the hallway with yellow bags stuffed with the snack for the day, which was, on that particular day, it was a banana. It was little packets of cream cheese and little tiny mini bagels that were taken into classrooms for kids to munch on. So they try to put a fruit and vegetable in there, a protein, a grain, a dairy product. And so how does this snack program

work? So obviously the food is being brought in and being distributed, but I guess what are the details of how that actually happens at the school? Oh, that's, yeah. So the way snack programs or lunch programs or breakfast programs work in schools is thanks to what I would say is an army of volunteers and not-for-profits that dole out or roll out these programs in schools. So the Hamilton School Board, which Kathy Weaver belongs to, works with this nonprofit called Taste Buds Hamilton. And Taste Buds allocates money to each school every year or a grouping of schools that they help out. And they help provide the snacks to the school.

So Kathy Weaver was allocated $75,000 at the beginning of this school year for its snack program that's offered to all the kids because they want to remove the stigma of it. Okay, so every kid in the school can access this then? Every classroom gets a yellow bag every morning that every kid can access, whether it's for a snack or to supplement their lunch that they bring in every day. So you said any kid can take food from this program. Even if they brought a lunch of their own, they can actually still access this food. Why do they make it so universal like that? I think because they don't want to signal out the children that desperately need it. So our food, our snack program is very well used. So when I was at Cathy Weaver, I spoke with Principal Jacqueline Kurtz. The way that we set it up is that it's open and available in the classroom. So there's, so kids can just access as they need and so

if you don't need it and you still want it you can have it it's important to us that there's no sense that you know carrie's really hungry she's going to go and get a cheese drink because anybody can go right um what i what i saw kathy weaver on that particular day that we went is that, you know, kids would open up their lunch and you don't, for many kids, you did not see the most nutritious lunch. I saw one child, they had things in their lunch bag, but they were eating a bag of chips. Another child had mini marshmallows as part of their lunch. So I think what they're trying to do is they're offering it to everybody so that the kids who don't bring in the most nutritious lunches still have something and they don't feel isolated in asking for a snack. And then especially I would imagine kids

who don't bring enough food for lunch, you know, this is really an important program for them, probably a more important program for them because they'll actually have something to eat when otherwise they might not have. And that's what Kathy Weaver and other schools across this country are seeing is that this year in particular, there are more kids that come to school hungry. And what they get at school in a place like Kathy Weaver is perhaps one of their most nutritious meals of the day. Okay, so that's like one part of the program, but how else does Kathy Weaver actually help kids who might need this extra food? So in the same room where those yellow bags and those trolley carts are located,

one of the things that I saw was these large totes being wheeled in. There were 10 of these totes, and they had bags of groceries. So Kathy Weaver is also part of this program called Food for Kids Ontario. It's also a charitable organization. They received no provincial funding. And what they do in these totes were white grocery bags that had food for kids for the weekend. So these are weekend hampers for kids. So they had two breakfasts, two lunches, and four snacks. And there's 70 kids who received these weekend hampers at Kathy Weaver. There's 11 children still waiting on the waitlist. Normally in other years, kids would move off the

waitlist within a couple of weeks. But because the need is so great, these kids have been on the wait list for a number of months now. And so Food for Kids is hoping to bring more kids off the wait list, but they just can't. They only attend to families in crisis right now, families who rely on free food or the food banks. And those are the only kids that they can provide the weekend hampers to. Wow. I mean, that's a pretty difficult situation

when they know there's kids that actually are requesting, their families are requesting this extra help, and they can't actually help them at this point. Not at this point. The demand is so great, they don't have enough money to provide hampers to every kid at the school at the moment. So, I mean, this seems like a good program to feed kids at school. But as you mentioned, Caroline, we know not everything is going smoothly here. So what is the current state

of this program and programs like it? One of the issues at Cathy Weaver, I'll start with them, is that they were allocated, like I said, $75,000 for the year. But the cost of food has gone up so substantially that they were spending at $11,000 a month just on their snack program. So think about a school year and all the months and $11,000 a month wouldn't get them very far. That math doesn't work out. It doesn't. So, you know, they would not be able to run until the end of June. I just heard from the school board, and thanks to sort of our story highlighting the issue, they received, Taste Buds received a donation specifically for schools like Kathy Weaver to keep them going.

So what I'm hearing is, unless the community steps in, and donors step in, there's not enough food in schools to feed kids. Someone quoted me, they're paying 30% more for food than they did last year. And the demand has gone up. So there's more kids who are asking for an extra banana or an apple or some bagels and cream cheese. So the demand has gone up and the cost has gone up. Yeah. And we've talked about the cost of food rising kind of in the last year a lot. We've seen inflation rise, of course, and food inflation in particular has gone up a lot. But I'm wondering about the other costs around this.

Like, do we know what else is driving up these prices so significantly? Yeah, it's interesting because when I spoke with a program director of a school food program in Newfoundland, he was saying that the cost of his food had gone up 20%, but the cost of all the cleaning supplies and other items associated with getting that food had gone up 25%. So we're not only talking about the banana and the apple and the cost of the food, we're also talking about the fuel costs and the supplies associated with providing that food into schools. So we talked about that. Let's go back to the demand side of things here, because you're saying they're actually seeing more kids in need of a program like this, this year. So what's happening there? I just think that we're

all feeling the pinch right now with inflation when we go to the grocery store. I mean, I have two young children. They like to eat, they eat a lot. And so when we all go to the grocery store, we're spending more money and families, some families, many families can't afford it right now. They're coming to school with something to eat, but it's not necessarily enough. Have you found things changed as far as need goes for food over the years or lately? I've found lately. What have you found lately? Post-pandemic, sort of.

Well, I know we're still in a pandemic. Post-shutdowns, right? Post-shut shutdowns, yeah. Yes, I've found that you can just see the struggle a bit more. The parents are struggling and not able to provide as much as before. And coming out of the pandemic, many families, many parents lost jobs. There's, you know, health issues, mental health issues happening at home right now. And so we're seeing that sort of play out in the school environment where kids are coming to school needing extras, needing a helping hand. One of the things that Debbie Field, who's a very strong

school food advocate, was saying that even parents that do not have much in their pockets will still find a way to feed their children. They'll still find a way to get their kids something so that they can go to school and have something to eat. But perhaps that's not the most nutritious meal. Perhaps that's not filling their tummy as much as it should. We'll be right back. Okay, so let's maybe broaden this out a little bit now, Caroline. How does what's happening at Cathy Weaver Elementary, how does that compare to what's happening across the country? So school food programs are having a very tough time right across the country with demand. One of the programs that I mentioned earlier about Newfoundland, they run the School Lunch Association.

That's the name of the program. And I was speaking with the executive director there. And they supply about 14,000 meals a month to kids in the area, to a number of schools in the area. It's a lunch program. And they suggest a price to families of $4 a day. So for a lunch, for example, you could get like a lasagna, garlic bread, some kind of vegetable, a milk or water. So that is your lunch. And the suggested price is $4 a day. What the director said to me is that there are fewer families that can afford to pay now than last year. So he told me in October they had 2,000 families who could not afford to pay. That's compared to the previous year where only 800 families could not afford to pay.

Wow. So they're seeing, you know, they're trying to make their dollar stretch further because they have more families in need. Meanwhile, they've seen more families come for food. So they've seen a 15% increase in the number of meals that they serve between that same period of time. Wow. There was another person who runs a food program or runs a number of community programs in Saskatoon. Among them is a food program. And he said, you know, pre-pandemic, he never had to withdraw from his line of credit in order to pay the employees, in order to run the program.

And now he said he does it always. And, you know, it was funny. The day I was talking to him on the phone, he said, Caroline, I have been writing so many grant applications lately just to sort of access dollars. And I wish my job was a little different so that I could actually run the programs. And they need an infusion of cash because they're not charging families to provide that snack program or their breakfast program. Right. So right now, they are struggling just to make ends meet. Okay, so I mean, let's actually look at the funding then. So how is something like this funded in Canada? I guess we've talked a little bit about

how the ONE program is, but how does funding work for programs like this in Canada? All provinces and most local governments, local municipal governments contribute some funding to a network of food programs across the country that feed roughly 1 million students a breakfast, a lunch, or a snack, which is about 20% of our student population. So these programs are the ones who do, let's say, the heavy lifting. The provinces and local municipal governments contribute, but they don't contribute a lot to the funding. You know, 20%, perhaps 25%. And the rest of the money comes through donations, community donations and grant writing. Yeah. Okay. So it sounds like each organization kind of has to hustle on their own in a way to

find that funding. After they receive the province's funding, then they have to do the heavy lifting and try to find money elsewhere. Do we have a sense of how much money provincial and territorial governments provide? So Ontario does provide a lot of money, but per student, it doesn't look like a lot. So Ontario provides $28 million in funding, and that has been a steady amount since 2014. Almost a decade. Yes, almost a decade. I mean, there has been one-time top-ups during the pandemic, but it's been about $28 million. My inbox was flooded when BC, in its most recent budget, said that they're

going to contribute about $214 million over three years to its school food program. Now, that is the largest investment that we have seen into school food programs in our history, in Canadian history. And so school food advocates were cheering about that. Wow. Yeah. And I'm curious now, like, how does Canada compare to other countries when it comes to this? Not so good. Canada is the only G7 country that does not have a national food program. Now, the prime minister did promise in 2021 that his government would contribute $1 billion over five years into a school food program. Now he's tasked his agricultural minister and his minister of family, children and social development to build some sort of school food program. I think there was a lot of hope that it would be part of the most recent federal budget and there was a lot of disappointment when it wasn't. I reached out to the government and said why

wasn't it part of the federal budget when this you know when you have been doing a lot of consultations on this and the message that I received is that work is underway it's coming but there's no indication about when it's coming. Okay well if if the if and when, I guess, the federal government does decide to put money up for it and create a national food program like other countries have, how would a national food program like that change things? I think the hope is that what is there right now would continue to exist because there's a lot of good work that's happening on the ground. And perhaps it would set some standards that every school should have some kind of program,

whether it's a breakfast, lunch or snack program. You know, there would be a food policy that dictates that there would be an infusion of cash, so that these programs are not as strapped as they used to be. I think that is the hope at the end of the day. Okay. I mean, I guess this is the thing, though, because the government obviously does have a lot of financial priorities, right? They can only spend money on so many things. They have to make those decisions. So why are these school programs so important, Caroline?

What were people telling you about this? There's a lot of research around school food programs. And one of the things that it does for children, it's not only about feeding hungry kids. It's more than that. It's about teaching children how to eat well, how to eat a nutritious meal. You have a very captive audience in your school building for a number of hours. It's a good opportunity to teach them, you know, math and science and reading and writing, but also an opportunity to teach them how to eat well. What does a balanced diet looks like?

We have part of that in many health and phys ed curriculums right now. We tell them how to do it, but this is a way of showing them how to eat a good meal too. There's many studies about attendance, how attendance improves when you have a school food program. There are studies about the attention span of kids, like when their tummies are full, their brains are ready to work. So we have that too. But there was a study out of Sweden that has a longstanding lunch program. And what the study found, it was a longitudinal study that tracked a number of people over the course of their lifetime. And they found that those who were

part of the lunch program in their elementary school years had a 3% greater lifetime earnings. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it's something. And it shows how school food programs can do good. Yeah. Yeah, because, I mean, it gets back to, like, what you were saying there, right? It's hard to focus and learn. We all know it's hard to focus on something, right, when you're hungry. And so, yeah, this sounds like it's actually setting kids up for a better future in the long run. Yes, definitely.

So to go back to Kathy Weaver Elementary School, which we talked off the top, it sounds like this particular school is going to have enough money now to get through the end of their year's food program. But what about next year? Well, I mean, TasteBuds will continue funding the school. They'll continue allocating money. They'll continue writing grant applications. They'll get some province funding. So they'll be able to continue the snack program. But what that looks like, we don't know yet. We don't know, you know, what the cost of food will be. We don't know about those increases. And we don't know how many kids will come to school hungry.

We don't know if it's going to be a growing need next year compared to this year. Caroline, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wells. Our intern is Andrew Hines. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland,

and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.