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PLUS, let’s not forget that not all the students will be there anyways.....cuz the parents who are so against this would still pickup their child for lunch, right??????  
 
Hehe...okay, I’m going to bed! Lol

I also think the fear of a paid program is it would push not all but a lot into financial distress if not already there. I have noticed and by all means not trying to sound racist but new workers to Canada pump out babies and sometimes multiple times over. And in our culture the lower income tend to have higher counts of children. These parents would probably have it rougher to pay. But rightfully so if you want to breed you should have to pay. Child tax should only be limited to say 2 kids, anything after on your own. I lived off min wage with one child not touching the child tax. Tough but doable.  
 
One thing is if you have EA's part time could one not charge for the lunch program and pay an extra hour to the part time EA to work over lunch? Even at $10 per month for a lunch program should cover 2 positions easily for an hour a day.

Larger schools have more staffing there for more EAs and there for more grade 8 students to help out at lunch. the smaller schools have less staff as there are less students and yet they can do it so the larger schools could as well.  
 
The school I went to im grade 8 in ontario was huge and they didn't have an issue. there was 8 grade 8 classes alone.  
 
Edited by WAHMderful_Life, 2019-05-31 10:00:16

yes some are free and some are paid programs. it sounds be the same as brandon.

haha... this is were the like/love/funny/angry button would come in handy.

Im not going g to comment about the first half of your post, Im staying out of that.  
 
Im not sure of all schools but at lest one does use our EAs and they get paid through the school... but the lunch program adds in more staffing and pays them through the lunch fees. lets just say they could probably do away with it and just use the EAs as long as they would go back to the patrol style supervision... then if they don't want to leave kids alone in each room with an EA jumping back and forth I would use the youth revolution kids and have 1 or 2 in each class eating with them and they can be there to go get the EA if needed. Or they could combine more kids into each room as well. there are options. you would loose out on warm up programs and hot lunch programs (paid, works like schools that have a canteen but only once a week) but I think parents would rather save the money. Im sure warm ups could possibly be figured out. Hot lunch maybe parent councils could do more with parent volunteers signing up at the start of the year.

??  
 
Ya, good luck with that. If your whole reasoning for this is parents not able to get time off at lunch to feed their own kids, how do you expect them to do it to supervise a classroom?  
 
And as someone who is highly involved in youth sports, good luck trying to find enough volunteers. It won’t happen.

While I don't think your ideas are terribly realistic, I appreciate your determination. Perhaps you are the passionate one capable of making change. Have/will you run for the school board? You seem to have all the answers and the drive to implement. If you can create these improvements without it increasing my taxes, I would vote for you in a heartbeat.

I not read the complete discussion here but feel consistency among the schools would be nice. Pretty sure this discussion has been raised here on ebrandon before. We are paying for our lunch program while the bussed in students are not. Makes little sense to us. They are also guaranteed space but not everyone is in the paid program at Riverheights. I do know of aa few people that moved to the RH south catchment area just to not worry about lunch.

WAHMderful...It is a lot to ask of older children to be in charge of supervision of younger students eating lunch...every day. These children deserve and need a break / recess as well! A grade 7 student can be 11. This is something that I would never ever support, and would work hard to oppose.  
 
To expect Youth Revolution to step up and supervise everyday is entirely unrealistic, as well as putting the burden on the teachers who are already working hard to provide meaningful YR experiences. I am expecting that your child/ren are younger are not in this age bracket?  
 
Edited by gadget48, 2019-05-31 11:29:44

The Lunch Program at Meadows School is ran by the Parent Council.  
Supervisors are hired and paid by the council.  
The monthly fees are as follows  
- Kindergarten - $12.50/month  
- 1 child - $25.00/month  
- 2 children - $40/month  
It has a discount for 3 children, but I can't remember.  
When you have a child in Kindergarten, there is no discount for having more than 1 child (our K kids go every other day to school.  
You can choose to pay for the program in 10 post-dated cheques, 3 post dated cheques, or in cash payments.  
So if you have 1 child only, the cost is $250 for the school year, and the cost is deductible on your taxes.  
I have no idea if bus student automatically get to stay for free or not.

Well they wouldn't need supervision during recess as that is already covered. Lunch we us the older students to safely have the smaller kids cross the roads with patrols. So we find it alright to have students as patrollers putting themselves in front of vehicles and hoping they stop but cannot walk down a hall and watch smaller kids.

If you took the time to read that properly it says maybe parent council could pick up doing more hot lunches with parent volunteers signing up. Hot lunches are not every day.. could be once a week or just once a month or even once very 2 months.. thats an extra provided by some paid lunch programs (you pay for the hot lunches if you want them).  
 
I would trade in warm up programs and hot lunches for free supervised lunch hour. Im assuming most would.

Yes definitely needs consistency not only in brandon but the province. RH south students will be getting a change soon..  
 
which brings up the brand new school with all new families you won't have a parent council let alone a lunch program in place. Im going to go out on a limb here and say the school will have to have lunch program figured out themselves at least for that first year or so no? interested to hear what will be happing there.

We are not saying they are to be running the program or fully in charge of the other students.. they would be an extra set of eyes.. only saying we could implement something like that if the schools are going to complain about not having 1 adult per room. For all i know other paid lunch programs don't even have this they may also have patrol style supervision ( 1 adult between 2 or three rooms walking to and from to check on the kids).  
 
they could even have incentives for them or they get volunteer hours. Im assuming kids still have to put in volunteer hours. Something like this looks good on a resume for their first job hunt.

Thank you : )

right...  
 
Im thinking more that they just have a couple mature older kids mixed in with each classroom having their lunch as well. they are helping by being a set of eyes for the EAs(supervisors) that are waking between rooms. then those EAs (supervisor's) are out on the yard for recess and since everyone is together at that point there would be enough of them.

Where will the money come from to pay these Parent Council employees and EAs to run the lunches? Through our taxes or through each family paying a $20 fee?  
 
There’s no way at all you can expect anyone to give up their lunches to do this for free. And you’ve stated numerous times your goal is a fee free lunch program for everyone. Let me know when this new program of yours is up and running.

I believe this is an issue.  
 
Bus students get to stay at lunch, my understanding is, because the division is legally responsible for them from when they’re picked up to drop off each day. For the division to get out of lunch supervision for bus students, they would have to bus them home for lunch. Much cheaper for the division to pay EAs to watch them. Probably doesn’t seem fair when one child living a block farther away gets free lunch and a ride to school, but what about the rural kids bussed 45 minutes one way to Brandon? Lunches would have to be 2 hours long if they were bussed home.  
 
Grade 7/8 kids are normally not at school over lunches. Some walk and enjoy their new found freedom of having a house to themselves over lunch. Also about once or twice a week, these kids have to use their lunch to bus between schools for band shop home ec etc. Not a reliable alternative as not enough would be there every day to volunteer.  
 
A lot of comments have been that they “pay the school” for lunch program. I do not think the schools actually run any of the programs. I may be wrong, but my understanding is that all are either run by YMCA or volunteer/parent council organizations. The school is not involved in receiving any funds for or organizing or running the programs for non bus students.  
 
Our school has a parent council run lunch program. It has many regulations placed on it. Staff to child ratio is maximum 1-25. The charge is about 20$ per month per child and the supervising staff gets an honorarium of 20$ a day. Given that a lot of the school months have 20 school days, you can see these programs just break even. In fact the regulations for running these programs is that it is not for profit. You cannot carry over a balance and the money received from parents all must be spent on lunch program expenses. Staff costs plus receipt books, cheque books, etc really equals $ received from parents. And the parent councils have to open their books to parents and the division to ensure they are not profiting from these programs.  
 
The big issue for these programs is finding people free every day to work one hour for 20$. If someone is home, it’s usually because they have young children and cannot find somewhere for them for one hour. Or they are temporarily unemployed- in which case they will quit as soon as they find a real job. No one is home at lunch for the kids to come home often also equals no one for parent councils to hire to supervise lunch programs.  
 
What would be the cost to the division to have EAs cover everyone for lunch? 20$ wage per hour x 8 staff (1-25 ratio and 200 kids in school) x 20 school days per month x 10 months x 18 elementary schools = $576,000?  
 
I am not for or against it. Just adding some facts as I understand them.  
 
I would encourage every parent to attend parent council and division meetings to voice their opinion on school topics.

the EAs are already being paid to do it at places that use them. the money doesn't come from lunch fees it is through the school.  
 
Now some places do use parent volunteers and yes that means they do it for free (there are people out there that don't expect to be compensated for everything they do) . they volunteer because they are available obviously. If I was a stay at home mom I would definitely volunteer at my school for a program like that... even if that meant bringing my baby/toddler with me.  
 
but what I was talking about was the EXTRA hot lunch programs would be nixed as they are a result of having paid employees/extra hands to do so.. but they are not a necessity like being able to stay over lunch hour is. ...so if we wanted to try and still have extras like hot lunches for the kiddos that would only work on a volunteer run program. Not a set in stone program. Parent councils run things like pizza day, BBQs, Dances and guess who is doing that the parent volunteers (which have very sadly declined over the years so much so I believe there are schools that don't even have them any more) . if there was more people willing to volunteer these days even just ONE day/evening out of the year we could do more fun stuff for the kiddos. but thats a different discussion and would be on each schools PC to run and discuss upon themselves.

Yes that is why the bus students don't pay. Would never expect for them to go home and come back that would't make any sense. I think what people are saying if they refuse to make staying over lunch available to everyone then everyone should have a yearly fee regardless of where they live (bus & non bus) .. doing so would make the cost cheaper for those already paying and yes unfortunately that means everyone now has to pay but then it is fair. it should also be a set price across schools. I personally think it should also have set regulations for the parent run programs vs parent run programs having to come up with their own.  
 
ah yes the older kids do have other programs going on.. (that is also different from what i am used to) we didn't have those things available in middle school. shop class, home Economics etc. was only a high school thing. there could be rotations though of students helping out. also as said before would be a great co op/ volunteer hours for high school students that are available.  
 
no the schools do not run them.. its a parent run lunch program (which like parent council is hard to run due to lack of volunteers) As for YMCA i think they do some lunch programs but they have said they will not do any more.. they are done with it! which makes me wonder if they will eventually cut off programs they currently run or slowly pull out of them. they probably have just as hard a time finding people who will take a 5 hr a week job right in the middle of the day as does the VLP. which is why using EAs wold be easier on everyone.  
 
Yes thats right they are not for profit.  
 
For ratios I don't know if there is any set ratio across the bored or if thats that specific school. would have to find that out. see there are so many things we don't know and cant simply go to a handbook to find out.. which is why at the very least lunch hour needs to be regulated better.  
 
You mention that no one is home at lunch hour so thats why we need these programs.. that is part of the point.. parents don't get a choice because they are not home. once children are old enough they could make the choice to go home or use the program but your younger kids aren't going home on their own to make lunch.Plus in a society that is so on top of safety these days..having them stay at the school makes sense.  
 
Thank you for adding in these facts : )  
 
yes parents need to attend these meetings if we ever want to change anything or even just know whats going on. Im surprised more parents don't seem to want to be in the know. to me I feel I don't know much of whats going on during the school day but attending parent council helps you know more about your kids school. even if its a couple times a year. you don't have to go once a month if its not possible for you. I feel like there should be people out there that can do it though.

As you have responded to nearly all posts but not my question, I shall pose it again. Have/would you run for the school board?

Any info on how the following schools run their programs would be great  
 
-Alexander  
 
-Betty Gibson  
 
-Ecole Harrison  
 
-Kirkcaldy  
 
any extra info about how any of the lunch programs are being run would be great.  
 
Thanks

Most likely not, im not sure im qualified for that.

There is no qualifications to run for the school board. All you need is enough votes to be trusted to spend over 90 million dollars.

I wouldn't have a clue what I was doing though lol. I m not sure I would have the time for it at the moment, working and young children, and starting into another volunteer run program in the fall. Plus Im not exactly comfortable with public speaking. Wouldn't mind going to public bored meetings at some point though. Or I could talk to someone on the bored. I do know one person I could talk to on the bored and I know someone else who said they have someone that we could go talk to.  
 
I feel like I would need to know more of the ins and outs of it... at this point I would be walking into unknown territory.

It's "board" not "bored"

This might be of interest to parents and citizens at large to have some input.  
 
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/education-conversation-will-continue-past-review-deadline-510653792.html

Thank you!  
 
wamnderful(or whatever) - Some of your ideas sound like they could benefit the Brandon School Divisions lunch programs however, the logistics of them would be more difficult than it sounds though, you have ruled out teachers, and are practical about volunteers and parent Council actually volunteering (it would be great to have constant reliable volunteers but not likely to be consistent in this day in age) and EAs are already short handed in the class room and already being paid to patrol over lunches, so who do you propose would be in charge of organizing all these programs for example scheduling shifts for volunteer shifts, dealing with people flaking and getting subs if someone's sick or doesn't show up, what if noone shows up, who is responsible then, etc.  
 
Just playing devils advocate, btw.