School board members in St. John’s served up a hot lunch to hundreds of displaced student from Paradise Elementary School.
CUPE Local 1560, employees of the Eastern School District, took the step after the school was closed temporarily do to mould problems.
CUPE Local 1560 President Derrick Barrett says, “Normally, the children would either go home for lunch or would be close enough to home to have their lunch dropped off. Now that they’re all situated in three different locations in a wide geographic area, their parents have to provide a bag lunch or supply their children with money to buy one. We’d like to help them out by providing this day where a hot lunch is available to all the kids.”
Says Barrett, “Our members are also the parents of District children and are keenly aware of what the parents and children of Paradise Elementary are going through. We took it upon ourselves to offer a hot meal and one hassle-free day to try and help out the parents and the children under our care.”
A hot lunch was provided in three locations; St. Matthew’s Elementary School, Mount Pearl Intermediate School and the NL School for the Deaf.