By Jeff Labine

School fills students’ stomachs with breakfast program

Jan 23, 2017 | 11:00 AM

At 12 years old, Mikayla Thomas’ culinary skills were put to the test.

She took on the role of sous-chef while helping to prepare pancakes for her Grade 7 class at Riverside Community School on Monday. Although she has made pancakes in the past, this was the first time she made them from scratch.

Thankfully, Mikayla had plenty of experience in the kitchen as she routinely helps out her mother when she’s home.

“Ever since I was a little girl I cooked lots,” she said. “I like making food and I like feeding it to people. I want to be a baker when I’m older and bake all kinds of stuff.”

Riverside is one of the few schools in P.A. that provides a breakfast program, which is offered to all 500 students. Mikayla said she’s glad her fellow students are able to come to school and have a meal.

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“Some kids don’t get to have food at home because they don’t have enough money to buy stuff,” she said. “We provide.”

Mona Markwart, the school’s principal, called the program essential to student’s learning.

“They know and trust that they will be taken care of and that they will have breakfast if they come to school,” she said. “We firmly believe that they need to have a relationship with us before they trust to learn.”

When the program was brought in five years ago, Markwart said they wanted to make sure the students were ready to learn when class started.

The program is funded through a privately-backed organization called Breakfast Club as well as some funding from the provincial government. The school has to give monthly reports to Breakfast Club and only have to apply to receive the funding every three years. The organization also provides the school with a criteria on what foods to provide.

She explained through this program, they are able to ensure all students start the day on the same playing field.

“There were some cutbacks,” she said. “Five years ago we used to get twice as much money. With oil and different economy hardships, we did get some cutbacks but we have been able to make it work. There’s still breakfast every morning. A lot of our kids would come to school hungry. For a lot of them, it was [a] choice. They don’t eat breakfast right away when they wake up but I think a lot of them were struggling to have breakfast in the morning.”

She said students aren’t forced to eat at school as they either had breakfast at home or simply choose not to. She added there’s always someone looking for seconds.

Jeff Labine is paNOW’s health and education reporter. He can be reached at Jeff.Labine@jpbg.ca or tweet him @labinereporter.