A long-awaited provincial lunch program for school students is nearly here. At a media announcement on Friday Aug. 23, Nova Scotia’s minister of education and early childhood development, Becky Druhan, called the pay-what-you-can program “historic.”
“This is about, day-to-day, ensuring our students are healthy, focused on learning, with full bellies, ready to tackle the day,” said Druhan. “It's about making life easier for families as well [because] we know that families have a lot on their plate—excuse the pun.”
Announced as part of the provincial budget in March, the new school lunch program will begin with Phase 1—elementary schools—this October, serving lunches to nearly 75,000 students at 255 schools across Nova Scotia. Druhan said that for schools that extend beyond elementary grades, for example, those that run up to Grade 8, “all students in the school will be part of Phase 1 of the program.” The lunch program will run in addition to the free breakfast and snack programs already available across public schools.
The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development—the EECD—launched a new website at NSLunch.ca for the program on Friday, previewing some of the meals offered to students and families when it starts. Some meal examples that will be part of the 40 menu items to roll out by October are now on the site, with photos.
Druhan says the program’s menu was developed with input from dieticians, pediatricians and students, and will follow the nutritional standards outlined in Canada’s Food Good and the Nova Scotia School Food and Nutrition Policy.
“Many of the meals have been on the menus of smaller local school lunch programs in Nova Scotia and are kid-approved favourites, like pizza and mac and cheese,” said Druhan. There will be two meal options to choose from each day, including a vegetarian option, with meals meant to focus on local ingredients, reduce food waste, and provide nutritious and inclusive meals.
According to Druhan, the program will launch “with something for everyone: from Acadian chicken fricot, to traditional M’kmaw corn chowder and biscuit, to butter chicken.” From the NSLunch website, Druhan said, “families will be able to see the food, read the meals' descriptions and see full ingredient lists to make informed choices on what to order.”
Families will order meals two weeks in advance, selecting how much they would like to pay each two weeks. That can be the total amount—$6.50 per lunch—some of the amount, or none. Whatever families and students pay will be kept confidential. Families won’t be able to pay more than $6.50 when ordering lunch but will be able to make a separate donation on the new site, which will be tax deductible.
According to the department’s math, Druhan said the program “has the potential to serve more than 13 million lunches in the first year.” The provincial budget estimated that this first year would cost $18.8 million to run—which Druhan said includes funding for staff to run the program at each school depending on its needs. The program is intended to grow into a universal lunch program for all students in the province in the next four years—which, according to the provincial 2024-25 budget, will cost an estimated $100 million annually by 2027.
For the rest of August and September, the EECD says, in an accompanying press release Friday, that it’s “putting the final touches on the program” as they work with schools, the seven regional centres for education and the CSAP and food vendors ahead of the program's Oct. 1 launch date. Based on the facilities and staff at each elementary school, the lunch program will run one of three ways: self-managed food service with school staff or volunteers; hired caterers preparing food at the school; or food vendors preparing meals off-site and delivering to the schools. According to the EECD, there will be 14 vendors providing lunch through in-school catering and delivery services.
According to the results of the 2023-24 annual Student Success Survey run by the EECD, 72% of students said they had eaten or were planning to each lunch that day, 15% said they were not eating lunch and 13% said they weren’t sure. An EECD spokesperson told The Coast by email that, of the 15% of students who reported not eating lunch, 19% reported not having anything to eat and 14% reported that they couldn’t afford to buy lunch.
Druhan said the program “was built with love by” and collaboration across provincial departments, food providers, educators, volunteers, families and community partners like Nourish Nova Scotia. “Our schools are helping to build the future of our province through supporting and educating our amazing students, and one of the ways we are doing this is through the Nova Scotia school lunch program, [which is] making life more affordable for families and fueling kids' learning by offering nutritious, delicious school lunches.”
