Packing lunches is the bane of Katie Armstrong’s morning.
So the Nova Scotia mother was “very excited” when she heard the provincial government was launching a lunch program at elementary schools across the province — including the school her son, Henry, attends.
The program is a pay-what-you-can-model and started rolling it out to schools last fall. To make food affordable and accessible to all, the program never placed expectations on families to pay for meals.
Armstrong opted to pay full price for her son’s lunches, hoping to offset the cost of the program for other children.
“I believe the very first time I did it, I paid the full six dollars,” she said in an interview with CBC News.
Henry tried but did not enjoy some of the meals like fish cakes and black bean tacos. He was disappointed by the pizza, which he described as “really wet” toppings toasted on top of bread.
“When I saw the response from Henry and from others and that it wasn’t really working for us, I reduced it to the four dollar amount.”
Armstrong isn’t alone. Through surveys and declining payment amounts, some parents are sending a message they want changes as the lunch program enters its second year this fall.
Using the freedom of information act, CBC News asked the province how many school meals were paid in full for each two-week order cycle.
At the beginning, about four per cent of meals received full payment of $6.50 each. A further 33 per cent of meals received partial payment.
By late April, the meals with full payment dropped to two per cent, and partial payments dropped to 10 per cent.
No one chose to make an extra donation to the program above and beyond the $6.50.
Armstrong believes in the importance of a school lunch for all children, regardless of ability to pay. But she and her son felt a little disappointed in the program, and hope the menu will be tweaked next year.
Henry Armstrong, 7, liked the program “medium” well.
“I kind of liked it, but not really that much,” he said. “I liked the red sauce pasta, and some of the sides they had because they were all vegetables and fruit.”
Armstrong still packs lunches often, and hopes for some new options in the menu.
“If a child doesn’t like the majority of them, even if they try it and they still don’t like it, there’s not really any room for trying new things after that or finding the things they like,” she said.
Armstrong said Henry told her sometimes the food was cold and seemed to have been sitting in the package for a while.
She feels this detracts from “an amazing program, in theory” which can provide for all children.
“I think that’s where the bigger issue lies,” she said. “I want to make sure that the food is food that kids will want to eat and be happy to eat.”
Aimee Gasparetto is the executive director of Nourish Nova Scotia, a charity that works to ensure young people have access to healthy food. It doesn’t deliver the lunch program, but is co-operating with the government on its development.
Gasparetto thinks parents’ concerns about quality and variety are valid, and some menu changes will come in the next year.
But she says the concerns need to be considered within the huge scale of the program.
“It’s going to take time to really adjust both the menu, the quality of the food and really make sure that the program over time is being adapted to the unique needs of different students in different regions,” she said in a recent interview.
Gasparetto said although the menu is the same across the province, schools have three different ways of getting the food depending what facilities they have.
Some schools make the food in their own kitchens with their own staff, and some have catering companies coming into the school to make the food. Others get food delivered from an off-site producer.
Though the province is trying for consistency, she said it can be a challenge.
But she’s also been hearing from school staff who used to see kids going without food, and are now able to change that.
“This program is fundamentally about easing financial and time pressures on families and also ensuring that every child at school has the opportunity to eat nutritious food in order to socialize, learn better and connect into the school environment in a much better way,” she said.
Through freedom of information laws, CBC obtained 19,563 responses to a province-wide survey of opinions on the school food program conducted earlier this year. Not all respondents answered every question in the survey.
Thousands of families also said their children were trying new foods, eating lunch more regularly, eating more nutritious food at lunch, and feeling more included at school.
All public elementary schools in Nova Scotia are participating, and the program will expand to junior high schools in the fall.
“We’ve got a year of data. That data is being worked on to incorporate feedback and really make program improvements,” Gasparetto said.
“We need a couple of years under our belt to really consider all of the impacts of this program.”
By comparison, Prince Edward Island also has a pay-what-you-can school lunch program. Last year, P.E.I.’s government released numbers which showed about 13 per cent of meals were fully paid for, and there was partial payment on 18 per cent of meals.
In Gasparetto’s view, cost recovery isn’t the most important thing; rather, the program is about building a “more equitable system.”
Research released late last year showed Nova Scotia has the highest child poverty rate in Atlantic Canada, with Feed Nova Scotia reporting a nearly 70 per cent jump in families going to food banks since 2021.
“One of the things that school lunch programs have shown to demonstrate is it can really work to address some of those food insecurity issues,” Gasparetto said.
CBC News requested an interview with provincial Education and Early Childhood Development Minister Brendan Maguire. The department declined the request but shared a statement.
“While payments have fluctuated, program participation has remained consistent — and what matters most is that no student is sitting in class hungry,” it read.
The department has previously told CBC News the program is offered to about 75,000 students and sees about 50 per cent participation.
The statement went on to say the province is looking at “new menu options, quality assurance tools, sustainable packaging and other actions” to respond to feedback on the program.
The province paid $18.8 million for the 2024-25 school year. The 2025-26 budget increased that to $61.2 million to account for the rollout to more schools.
The federal government has committed $12.4 million as part of its goal for a national school food program.
Katie Armstrong plans to keep ordering meals her kids will eat. She has two younger children who will enter elementary school soon.
“I 100 per cent think the program needs to stay,” she said. “I think that this is the first year it’s in play, and there’s always room for change and improvement.
“We definitely won’t give up,” she said.
