‘Happier, healthier students’

Parkside Elementary expands breakfast program

SUMMERSIDE — After being in the works for more than a year, Parkside Elementary has begun offering a more extensive breakfast program to its students.

“We have a certain percentage of the student body that really could need a little bit more breakfast in the morning,” said principal Nick Martin. “So we decided to look at how we could support something like that.”

In addition to the new healthier option, the school had offered a cereal program for the past few years.

Martin said the cereal program was beneficial to many students, but staff saw other schools had more extensive options and wanted to do the same at Parkside.

The breakfast program, Martin said, is important to ensure that no student has to sit through class on an empty stomach.

“We noticed that there can be behavioural issues with kids that come in hungry. They’re distracted. They’re not as focused on their academics,” he said. “We thought ... the child with a full belly, with good, proper nutrition is going to be a much happier, healthier student.”

The school had been looking into expanding its breakfast program since before COVID-19 hit.

To help make the plan a reality, Martin reached out to the Centennial Auto Group,

which provided the funds to purchase food, and the Summerside Credit Union, which supplied a fridge and freezer.

“The breakfast program, there’s proven studies out there that it’s very valuable to students,” said Sarah Millar, CEO of the Summerside Credit Union. “It was an initiative that we were proud to be a part of.”

After months of work behind the scenes, the new program launched April 7, with home and school volunteers passing out blueberry banana smoothies.

Krista Ward, president of the Parkside Home and School, said “it feels great” to finally get the program up and running. Her contribution has mainly been behind the scenes — preparation work as well as looking to see what other schools with breakfast programs have been doing.

“We’ve had a really great response,” she said. “The kids were really excited, and they were eating up all the smoothies. I think it’s a win-win.”

Although the new program is currently only running Tuesday mornings, both Ward and Martin hope to eventually offer healthy options twice a week.

“There’s a lot of smiling faces here,” said Martin. “A lot of kids were very excited. As administration and the school staff, we feel fantastic about the fact that we can offer a program like this.”

Although the free breakfast aims to feed kids who might not get to eat at home before class, everyone at the school is welcome to take advantage of the program, regardless of need.

The smoothies from the first week, for example, went out to every student at Parkside.

“We want to continue that because we certainly don’t want there to be any sort of stigma with some kids having it be offered to them,” said Martin. “So we want to make sure it’s open to everybody.”