The hot lunch at the Crawford Bay School has been a wonderful and successful program for many years now. It has fed our community’s children a hot, nutritious and colourful meal to lead them strongly into an afternoon of learning. It is in jeopardy.
For the entire time that this program has been around, it has been run on a fine balance of one paid staff position (the chef) and endless volunteer steam. The steam has been quickly evaporating and become a fine mist, barely able to keep breath in the program. Farley, our chef of the past two years, has brought so much financial and commerce knowledge, food security and nutrition intelligence and strong energy to the program. But he’s done now. With Farley, due to a necessary and understandable life-shift, goes our uber-volunteer, Jennifer Irving. Between these two people, the program was very effectively brought out of the red and made much more well-oiled. But, it still has its major issues… It still requires a commitee to oversee its operations. It still has problems with meals owing and communication between home and school. It needs help.
There are no more volunteers. Our PAC executive consists of two to three people. We are representing 150 parents and the work is too great. A survey has been set up to ask parents to help us decide the future of the hot lunch program. In my opinion, unless several more people step forward and offer to take over the running and operations of the lunch program, it will not continue. It can not continue as it is.
We need to hire a new chef. We need a committee to be set up under the PAC umbrella (if it is to remain a PAC program) and take over the reins. We need to relieve the school administration and the PAC executive from being the only ones to ensure success of this program.
Parents reading this: please take part in the survey that is on its way to you now. Please consider the value of this program. To the rest of our community: does a hot, nutritious meal for our area youth have great importance to you? Your responses and ideas are welcome. Feel free to email me: mainstreet@theeastshore.net
One Response
I think this is a very important program and deserving of the support of the whole community, particularly parents. I dearly hope it gets what is needed.
It’s also really important at this time of changing of the guard to create a ‘knowledge base’, that is to document the procedures, experience and wisdom of the outgoing crew so that someone coming in next session doesn’t have to start from scratch or ‘re-invent the wheel’.