In recent days there have been several stories in the news around education, and issues surrounding it. The first that caught my attention was a story in what used to be called the Georgia Strait – and is now simply the Strait.
The story was titled “Advocates push for school lunch program funding in BC”. In the story, nutrition crusader Lisa Werring said that that about a third of elementary-school kids in Canada don’t eat a daily breakfast. This information came from a study released last year by Breakfast for Learning. This organizations view is that hungry kids can’t learn (no argument from me), which is why it gave out $131,675 for school breakfast programs in BC in 2009.
Now I am not going to say that low income families are wasting their money (although some do just like everyone else), but a healthy and nutritious breakfast of regular oatmeal (not individual flavored packets) is just pennies a day. A four litre jug of milk is $4.00 and how many cups of milk do you get from that … and then an apple, an orange, or banana.
Sure that is going to get a bit boring day after day – but even a couple of eggs with toast, milk, and a piece of fruit isn’t going to be that much more. Shreddies – Raison Bran – etc (NOT Fruit Loops, Cocoa Puffs and other sugary treats that are masked as breakfast) … all of these things are going to be under a dollar a day.
Maybe I’m wrong on this and we should explore a school breakfast program, BUT I am concerned that when we have schools that are closing --- music and arts programs (proven to help in brain development) which are either gone or a shadow of what they once were – a lack of librarians – and a host of other issues and problems – can we truly afford this.
One thing is certain though … we need to have a good hard look at the delivery of government services to make sure that we are getting the best value for where dollars are currently going; and that includes the education ministry.
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I’m Alan Forseth … and those are the thoughts of one conservative.
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