Lunches could cost Murchison school $5k

The new school lunch programme has been described as a “bloody disaster” by one local principal who says it will cost the school about $5,000 a year to employ someone to distribute the lunches.

Following the Government’s redesign of the free school lunch programme to save about $130 million annually, lunches are now made in Hamilton and then delivered around the country to about 242,000 students.

Murchison Area School principal Andy Ashworth says he distributed the lunches to the 200-plus students for the first couple of days of the programme this year and it took him two hours. That probably made him “the best paid dinner lady in New Zealand”.

“I’ve got things I need to be doing rather than dishing out lunches. That’s not sustainable.”

He says he has advertised for a person to distribute the lunches and then collect containers, but has found no-one yet and Murchison is a small community to find someone for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. He estimates it will cost $5k a year to employ someone on the living wage.

“That comes out of our operations grant.”

Schools with more than 350 students get funding from the Ministry of Education to support the distribution of lunches but Andy says smaller schools have to cover the cost themselves which he calls inequitable funding. He has voiced his concerns to both the ministry and local MPs.

West Coast-Tasman MP, Maureen Pugh, acknowledges there have been teething problems around the revamped lunch programme in some areas. But she says a broad range of school leaders are generally agreeing the programme is working well at a massively reduced cost and without the previous wastage. She says there are some principals who are liaising with the ministry over size and distribution of the lunches.

Under the funding changes to the Healthy School Lunches Programme – Ka Ora Ka Ako Programme – the ministry’s operation and integration leader, Sean Teddy, says there is limited ability to support schools with their on-site management of school lunches.

Andy says the other issue with the revised lunch programme is the meals are not adequate for all students and is leaving some hungry. He says the same size meal is given to every student in the school, from Year 1 to Year 13, with Year 9 to 13 given two extra items of food to go with it.

“For year one to eight, it isn’t enough – the portions are tiny. Kids are still hungry, and they see half the school getting the other bits. Previously they got the same meal, but in three different sizes.

“Most kids come with a morning tea and we’re noticing they’re having more then. They’re putting more stuff in to cover for lunch. It’s not meeting the needs.”

While the meal is small for some students, he says the food itself is fine – “not spectacular, but not too bad”. “It’s nowhere near as good as our last supplier, but maybe we were spoiled.”

When it comes to the meal itself, the ministry says they were developed in consultation with the Ministry of Health, school and nutrition stakeholders, and every meal meets the minimum weight as well as vegetable or salad requirement.

In the past, a local café made and delivered lunches to the school through programme. Now, lunches are made in Hamilton, delivered frozen to a distribution centre at Tapawera where they are thawed, reheated and sent to Murchison where they arrive at lunch time.

After lunch, Andy says the school then has to deal with the 200-or-so unwashed meal containers until they are picked up the following day when the next lunch arrives.

“That rubbish sits in the plastic bags until the next day’s lunch is delivered and it is collected. It stinks the classrooms out. It’s just really not thought through in any shape and form.”

The ministry says the aluminium trays are transported back to Hamilton for recycling to support the environmental sustainability of the new lunch programme and schools are asked to check they are as clean as possible.

Not all schools qualify for the free lunch programme and because Murchison Area School is in the lower-to-middle equity index - decile 5 on the old system – Andy says it just qualifies.

“We could have said no and given this up, but for a number of our families, this makes a big difference to them. So, I said to my board, we have to give this a try. We’ve got another board meeting coming up and we’ll discuss if it’s worth keeping it up. But that’s probably what Mr Seymour (associate minister of education) wants us to do.”

Andy says four students have left the school because parents were employed at the café making school lunches in the past and have had to seek work elsewhere.