Student Nutrition is Growing, and we need your feedback!

Over the past year, the City of Toronto has made one of its largest-ever investments in student nutrition, recognizing that access to healthy food is essential to student success. As families continue to face rising grocery costs and affordability pressures, expanding school-based nutrition programs helps ensure that more children have access to nutritious food during the school day.

Through this investment, the City has expanded the Student Nutrition Program to reach more students and schools across Toronto. This expansion has also brought new programs to neighbourhood schools that previously did not offer student snacks, including several schools in Willowdale. By increasing access to healthy snacks, the program helps support students’ ability to focus, learn, and participate fully in the classroom.

While many parents have expressed gratitude for this support and the reduced time and cost of packing snacks, the rapid expansion of the program has also highlighted new operational challenges for schools and volunteers. The success of these programs depends heavily on the dedication of parent volunteers who help receive, organize, and distribute food each week.

At Avondale Public School, for example, volunteers help deliver classroom snack bins to feed approximately 1,000 students. This includes receiving and organizing large shipments of fresh fruits and vegetables, with some parents describing the weekly deliveries as “Costco-level” unloading. While volunteers are proud to support such an important program, the scale of the expansion has raised questions about the support, resources, and infrastructure required to sustain it. 

To better understand these impacts, I successfully moved a motion at the Board of Health requesting that Toronto Public Health conduct a survey to capture the experiences, challenges, and opportunities associated with the expansion of the Student Nutrition Program.

To support these discussions, I have also launched my own community survey to gather feedback to share with Toronto Public Health as conversations continue about how the program can be improved and strengthened.

ATTN: STUDENTS AND PARENTS! Student Nutrition Program Evaluation Survey

If you are a parent of a child receiving school snacks, a student who receives snacks, a teacher or school administrator, or a volunteer helping to distribute snacks, I encourage you to CLICK HERE to complete the survey. 

The survey should take approximately 8–10 minutes. All responses will remain confidential and will be reported only in aggregate.

Take the survey here!