The kitchen was a hive of activity to say the least, and when you watch the video below, you’ll understand why. The school kitchen was the source of many interesting sounds and aromas that forced us to shoo away nosy kids and teacher alike.
The hot lunch program is a partnership between the community school and Courtenay Elementary, and it officially started on Monday, the 13th. While there were a few hiccups, the smiles and thumbs up from the kids and staff indicate the menu was a giant success.
In some respects, the program was a bit too successful as some kids dumped their lunches for what the kitchen was serving. We would like to echo the words of the principal in his weekly email:
We understand that some families struggle to provide healthy and affordable meals to their children, and we want to ensure that every student has access to a nutritious lunch each day. We also want to make sure that no student will feel excluded or singled out for receiving a free hot lunch, as all students, paying or not, will receive the same meal.
So this is the plan: login to MunchaLunch (https://munchalunch.com/schools/Courtenay/) if you would like to order hot lunches for your child.
However, if you would like the school to provide free and nutritious lunches for your child – wonderful! Just reply to this email and if you could specify which days of next week you would like your child to access the program, so much the better. At the end of the week, I’ll email the families of children who received free lunches without an email coming from parents. The email will be something like “we were happy to have served your child a free lunch _____ times this week”. If you receive an email like that and you’re fine with it, great, no response is necessary. If, however, you sent your child to school with a lunch every day and you would prefer they not access the hot lunch program, just reply to the email and we’ll take it from there.
There’s more to come, so stay tuned!
For more information about the hot lunch program or to order hot lunch visit the Hot Lunch page.