The Daily Charitable Trust is coming up with alternative initiatives to help provide school lunches in Te Puke.

Since 2020, the trust has been providing free meals to Te Puke Schools.

Last year, the trust was providing 2000 school meals per day to eight schools under the government’s Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School Lunches programme.

Four other schools were ineligible for the funded school lunches, but with the help of sponsors such as Zespri, the community and support from Kāhui Ako o Te Puke (community of learning) the trust was making an additional 200 meals daily for those four schools.

This all changed at the beginning of this year after the School Lunch Collective was awarded a government contract under Associate Education Minister and Act leader David Seymour’s cost saving reforms.

Now, the Te Puke trust still provides funded lunches, but for just two schools and only until the end of the year.

Te Puke Primary School and Maketū School receive 314 meals a day from the trust, under Ka Ora Ka Ako, between them.

The decreased numbers through the reforms essentially removed the trust’s ability to provide free meals to the Te Puke schools outside the programme - Fairhaven, Te Ranga, Paengaroa and Pongakawa.

Funding initiatives

But general manager Chrissi Robinson hasn’t thrown in the towel.

She said the trust had made a decision to search for ways to still get food into the four non-eligible schools.

It has secured sponsorship from Synergy Tech NZ which means 30 free meals a day are sent to Fairhaven School and food such as fruit and crackers is sent to other schools.

“We are still sending free food to those unfunded schools for kids. It’s definitely not the full meal that we were able to do when we had money coming in from the contract, but it’s tasty and healthy,” said Robinson.

In another initiative the trust has also rolled out pre-ordered $5 meals for 30 students at Fairhaven School and the trust can also provide these for other schools if the level of interest enables them to keep the price low.

“We had to ask ourselves: How do we keep the food going into those schools healthy, affordable and convenient?”

Robinson said the meals are provided at cost and save parents about $7 per child per week.

“We wanted to put the option out there so there’s an option that is nutritious, affordable and easy for parents, so we actually deliver it to the school in a lunch box, pick up the lunch boxes and wash them. You order online and it is cheaper than if the parents were to go and make that meal, so it is a win-win.”

Community voice

As word about the meals got out, Robinson said parents at the government-funded schools have begun to ask if the $5 meals can be delivered to their children at those schools “because their child has stopped eating [the funded meals]”.

It is not the only feedback she has heard about the revised scheme.

“We are getting a lot of comments from parents who have kids at Ka Ora, Ka Ako schools saying ‘we miss you guys’.

“There’s a strong voice from the community that it is not like for like and that is something that was promised that it would be like for like.

“There are some real issues, you see it all over the media.”

Principals’ plea

Earlier this month, the NZ Herald reported that the New Zealand Principals’ Federation had made a plea to the Government to revert to the old school lunch system, saying the new scheme was beset with issues.

While acknowledging early problems may have been due to “teething issues”, in a letter to David Seymour, they said issues were continuing.

The principals listed multiple reasons for their dislike of the programme including portion size and quality of the food; the untimeliness of delivery, unsealed containers leaving food open to contamination, burnt food and lunches not turning up.

Challenges

While her school hadn’t experienced all the issues others had, Te Puke Intermediate School principal Jill Weldon said there had been a few challenges. Initially there was no communication with the contract holders when deliveries were not on time.

“The [meal distribution] system here [in the school] is superb, but it is reliant on lunches being delivered on time.”

She said the communication issue has now been resolved.

“Our main issue it that we’ve got a beautiful looking three-week menu, but that’s not what we get. In the first couple of weeks, we had butter chicken four days in a row and something else two days in a row and the kids get hoha with that very quickly.”

Pre-made frozen meals had sometimes been substituted, there had been issues with the special dietary requirement meals at times not being suitable and the packaging on some of the meals had melted when the meals were heated.

“Sometimes we have some boxes not delivered, so they’ve still got quite a few teething issues, but for us, most days there’s plenty of food and if someone is hungry, they are not going without.”

Weldon said the food now on offer was “nowhere near the quality” of that provided by The Daily.

“We miss that. We really miss the fruit, and we really miss the little snacks that we had.

“And the other thing is, when it’s local, you can just call up, talk to a local person and it’s fixed the next day.”

She said the $5 meals offered by The Daily “look incredible”.

“Maybe, if the model can be that it goes back to a local model for $5, you are still saving money, but it’s hard to imagine [the Government] backtracking.”

School Lunch Collective response

A spokesperson for the School Lunch Collective acknowledged there had been cases of repetition of the meals delivered to some schools.

“We are working with our partners in the Collective to provide more variation,” said the spokesperson.

“The School Lunch Collective has investigated the melting packaging and found the meals were heated for 30 minutes at 180C in a convection oven. This has caused the lunches to overheat as convection ovens are hotter than conventional ovens. Going forward, these meals will be reheated at 160C in a convection oven for 20-25 minutes.

“A recent delivery error saw the special dietary meals for Te Puke Intermediate delivered to the wrong school. We apologise to the teachers and students this impacted. We have put additional processes in place, including additional data checks, to mitigate any future despatch errors.”

The spokesperson said the collective’s kitchens were verified and audited regularly by independent MPI accredited specialists, and “we follow the Food Act and Food Control Plans”.