Saving on children?

Now that food prices have sharply increased, Ukrainian school principals are faced with the dilemma of feeding their pupils adequately on their budgets. Asked whether there have been any recent changes in the way schools have been feeding children, school administrations do not hide the truth: one solution is to reduce the portions of school lunches.

Svitlana Pohorila, a food inspector at the Rusava general educational school in Myronivka raion, Kyiv oblast, told The Day: “Food prices have increased nearly twofold. For example, beef that was selling for nine hryvnias at the start of the year now costs 23 hryvnias; butter costs eight instead of five hryvnias; we can buy milk at 2.8 hryvnias instead of 1.8 hryvnias only a month ago. All 200 children enrolled in our school belong to the so-called Chornobyl category, so their meals are paid for by the Chornobyl Foundation. Quotas were adopted at the start of the year, and when the prices jumped no one bothered to change them. So, for lack of a better solution, we have to reduce their diet. Before, every pupil could have three cookies, now it’s only two; the cutlets are thinner by 20 grams, and we can dispense a smaller amount of yogurt. Of course, all this is wrong because our children require a special enriched diet, but if we don’t reduce the portions, some children will be left without a lunch.”

The situation with grade schools in Ukraine’s capital is no better. According to the Kyiv City State Administration’s press service, citing Lilia Hrynevych, the head of the KMDA’s Chief Directorate for Education and Science, school meals are being personally monitored by Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky, so the nutritional quotas adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine cannot be breached or altered. That said, however, bureaucrats should pay a visit to at least one subsidized school in Kyiv.

Natalia Parkhomenko, the deputy principal for educational work at Special School No. 194 in Kyiv, is very troubled by rising food prices. Before the price jump every pupil in grades 1-4 was allocated 4.3 hryvnias’ worth of food, with 4.8 hryvnias’ worth of food for children in grades 5-11. The subsidies have not been changed even though this money buys considerably less food today. So the school administration made the unpopular decision to reduce the lunch portions.

“We were forced to make this decision and we hope it’s temporary. I think that the budget appropriations for school food will be revised soon and the situation will get back to normal,” Parkhomenko says.

Oleksandr Hrebelnyk, a member of the Kyiv City Council’s standing commission on education, is convinced that the municipal authorities should have focused their priorities on social issues a long time ago: “Lunches for schoolchildren are by far more important than the problem of educational reform, which the mayor of Kyiv came up with. Of course, the overall price increase affects overall disbursements, but making up for these expenses by cutting the portions of school lunches is unacceptable. We have to raise the subject of increasing our funding. We are going to discuss this question at the next meeting of our commission and submit the resolution to the Kyiv City Council.

While the bureaucrats are finally getting ready to pay attention to schoolchildren, the caloric content of school lunches is shrinking by the day. School cafeteria workers are scared to contemplate what will happen if food prices continue to rise. If that happens, then a school lunch will not be enough to feed a cat.

COMMENTARY

Anatolii SYTNYK, dietician:

Nutritional guidelines for schoolchildren, geared to age, were adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. To ensure proper growth, children require a certain amount of calories, vitamins, and microelements. We have cabinet-approved guidelines that were developed by experienced physicians and children’s dieticians. If the portions of school lunches are reduced, children may not obtain the necessary amount of food, and some of these schoolchildren are orphans, from low-income families, and/or those who are deprived of parental care. For these children school is the only place where they can get regular and adequate meals. Therefore, if they receive less food than they should, their diets will be unbalanced, which may lead to a variety of diseases, from anemia to beriberi to gastric disorders and decreased optimal growth.