In recent weeks, the 56-year-old school has made several urgent appeals to the school population for more vollies to come forward – and now, with little response, the school is asking members of the wider community, perhaps those with a passion for feeding their kids healthy food, to lend a hand.
Canteen manager Cre Millar is helped by two paid kitchen hands each day but also needs two volunteers a day to make things run smoothly.
At the moment she only has one volunteer a day which makes the work of preparing the healthy homemade lunches a tough ask for the regular volunteers.
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READ NOW‘We have one helper a day at the moment, which makes it a tough and tiring day for the vollies,’ Ms Millar said.
‘It’s a big school and we really should have five in the canteen to make and serve our predominantly green menu which means most things are made from scratch on the premises, whether it’s a curry, pasta, sushi, fried rice or chimichangas,’ Ms Millar said.
‘In some schools, where there haven’t been enough volunteers, the canteens are privatised and no longer run by the WA School Canteen Association, which means the menu is full of things like wedges and chips and other stodgy starchy products.’
Ms Millar believes offering healthy alternatives does have a positive affect that students take into adulthood saying children often choose to eat what their friends ate, even if they didn’t normally eat it at home.
Ms Millar, who has the expert help of a volunteer business manager to take care of the bills, books and staff wages, said the 20-minute recess service was intense as many growing boys came back two or three times to fuel up.
The canteen is also one of the Ardross school’s main income sources, raising about $20,000 a year to help fund the art award, camps, library books and teacher resources.