Ontario schools have their plates full of big issues like falling math scores, an evolving curriculum and crumbling buildings.But nothing gets parents’ attention like the smaller daily challenges their children face. Such as unpalatable lunchrooms.Following a Star story Wednesday which highlighted the bedlam served up during many school lunch hours, readers from Sudbury to London weighed in with their own tales and worries in emails and through social media.Examples of overcrowded rooms and supervision ratios of one adult for up to 99 children struck a nerve among parents, educators and lunchroom supervisors alike. So did the image of a 6-year-old eating in the boys’ bathroom so he could escape the noise of a hundred other kids. When Toronto dad Tim Millan visited the dingy basement lunchroom at his son’s east-end Toronto school a few years ago, he made a decision: no more lunches at school for his kid.The room featured low ceilings, poor light and deafening noise, he recalls, along with a supervisor who constantly rang a hand bell in an attempt to restore order.One minute in the din and he realized why his son’s food often came home untouched.“We completely rearranged our lives so I could bring him home for lunch every day,” says Millan, who teaches nearby and was lucky enough to be flexible at midday. Many adults report feeling queasy over the high decibel counts, kids in snowsuits packed into rooms where they don’t have enough time or peace to eat, and lack of staff or volunteers monitoring them.One Toronto mother told of being hired last year as a lunchroom supervisor at her son’s east-end school to manage 75 elementary kids crammed at tables inside, and then outdoors on the playground.“It was the hardest 15 bucks (an hour) I ever made,” she said Wednesday. She only lasted a few shifts.“Fifteen kids want to go to the washroom, 20 want the water fountain and a bunch of kids are pushing each oth ...
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