Parents urge province to step up for student lunch supervision

A group of parents is urging the provincial government to increase its funding to the Brandon School Division to keep elementary students at school during lunch.

The Brandon Parent Council Collective appeared before the BSD board of trustees on Monday evening, thanking the division for taking steps to improve the situation for parents and students.

Currently, students who live within 1.6 kilometres of their school are sent home for lunch, unless a supervising program — typically organized by parents — is in place for the students. The programs usually come with fees for parents to pay people to supervise the children at the school.

“Proper funding for the Brandon School Division is not just about lunch supervision, it is about sustainability, fairness for taxpayers, safety for our children and supporting teachers,” Rana Wilkinson, spokesperson for the parent group, told the board. “It is about ensuring that a 12-year-old-girl is not rushing three kilometres a day to make it back to class.”

Under the current system, students who live 1.6 km away from school or further have their supervision during lunch taken care of by the school and are also bused at the start and end of the day.

BSD is planning to take over the tasks of hiring staff, bookkeeping, collecting payments and other work related to student lunch supervision from parents next year, though it will come at a cost of about $38 per student per month.

Wilkinson said while that’s a positive change, the province needs to step up.

“We will continue to speak to provincial representatives, share our stories, push for a funding model that reflects real enrolment growth, real inflation, real staffing costs and real student needs,” Wilkinson said at the meeting.

She also said she wants to see legislative change, so that the proper funding is given to divisions during the lunch hour.

Wilkinson told the Sun on Tuesday that she is “very grateful” that the division came up with a fix, but that it’s not the final solution needed.

“I think our (provincial) government sees the gap and wants to help, but it’s a big machine with a lot of cogs,” she said. “Just changing the noon hour from (being considered) child care to education would have a massive ripple effect throughout Winnipeg and Brandon.

“We’re hoping we can move forward with it sooner than later.”

Wilkinson urged trustees on Monday to continue advocating to the province.

She said since starting her push for the change, she can see that government officials at all levels want to help, but “it’s the system that is broken.”

She said that the current arrangement becomes especially difficult for children during cold weather or when it rains.

“It’s a glaring inequity for half of our families in Brandon.”

At the meeting, trustees asked administration to publish Wilkinson’s 15-minute presentation on the division’s website and send it to the education minister. Trustees also talked about sending every MLA across the province an email about the issue to help start the change.

BSD Supt. Mathew Gustafson in an interview Tuesday said the division understands the parents’ concerns and is trying to address them.

He said the division is in a difficult position funding-wise, with the cost of staffing, supplies and aging buildings amid enrolment growth, while trying to keep tax hikes for ratepayers low.

“The division has had to make some tough decisions over the last number of years, which have resulted in reductions and other services that we normally would have been able to try to support,” said Gustafson, who wasn’t at Monday’s meeting.

The added $5 million in provincial funding BSD will receive from the province this year is appreciated, he said, but additional levels of service would have to come with additional funding or come at the cost of other existing programming.

“Categorical funding designed to specifically address the lunch supervision — that would go a long ways to addressing the parent concerns, while also allowing the division to provide some of that support without it coming at the cost of tax increases or classroom teachers or EAs,” he said.

He said Wilkinson’s presentation will be useful in engaging the province in conversations about the topic.

One parent who is involved in the lunch supervision program at a school attended by three of her children said while she works full-time, she took on the project with another parent because it was needed.

“Neither of us were able to get home for lunch every day between 11:35 and 12:35 p.m., so we had to,” Kelly Main said.

“It’s 2026. Most families, I think, have all adults in the home working, and I don’t know a lot of work schedules that are flexible enough to allow parents to go home for an hour at 11:35 in the morning,” she said.

Main said there was a lot of trouble finding someone able to take on the organizing of the program, “and somebody needed to step up.”

Main was forced to create a registration form, open a bank account, get liability insurance, hire supervisors, make a hiring package, develop a payment system, obtain criminal record checks, decide how much to charge parents and also communicate with them.

“It was a lot of work, hundreds of hours,” she said.

Main said an infuriating part for her is that there is a divide at 1.6 km from the school. Parents pay the same taxes, but are treated differently depending on where they live, she said.

“If you live 1.6 kilometers away from the school, your children not only get a ride to and from school, but they get to stay at school over the lunch hour for free with proper supervision,” she said. “If you live 1.59 kilometers from the school, all of a sudden, all of that is on you — not only getting them to and from school, but figuring out a plan for lunch hour.

“If you have more than one kid in school, that adds up.”

She said it was an impossible situation she and other parents were put in and that the work never should have fallen on volunteers. The division “really stepped up” by agreeing to take it over next year, she said.

“What really needs to change is the legislation and the funding that the Brandon School Division gets, because it’s a tremendous burden to put on families in the city, especially lower income families,” Main said.

In a statement provided late Tuesday to the Sun, Education Minister Tracy Schmidt pointed to the NDP government’s $30-million universal school nutrition program and its increase in education funding for the Brandon division.

“It is ultimately up to school boards to make budgetary decisions based on the operational needs and priorities of their divisions, including staffing and lunchtime supervision,” Schmidt said.

» alambert@brandonsun.com