Leardi visits local elementary school to view provincial student nutrition program

Continued from Page 1

“It’s great to see the provincial money being put to good use with our funding partners,” he said.

The primary function of the program, Leardi added, is to get nutritious snacks to children and it is doing just that.

As for food insecurity in the region, Leardi turned the focus to volunteer and service agencies helping to provide food to people.

“We have a lot of good support in Essex County,” he said.

Tania Sorge, principal at Stella Maris Catholic Elementary School, said she tapped into the OSNP program shortly after her arrival about 18 months ago. She said the OSNP program is used at Stella Maris on a daily basis, sometimes twice per day.

“They are still hungry in the afternoon,” she said of the students.

There are about 380 students served daily at Stella Maris, with Sorge stating she saw the need upon her arrival as principal. She said teachers and administrators would have snacks for students but the program was required to fill the need.

“We can’t keep enough food in the fridge,” she said.

Learning and thinking takes up energy and that makes students hungry, she added.

Essex MPP Anthony Leardi delivers healthy snacks to classrooms at Stella Maris last Friday.

Letters To The Editor

Return roads to original condition after construction

I understand that new construction requires access to services underground, and that digging up our main street (and others) is necessary.

What is not necessary is the shoddy job being done patching up the road after the completion of the job. Almost every patch is rough and below grade, bumpy and simply not smooth enough, like before it was dug up.

I think we can expect and make demands of the contractor’s to restore our roads to original condition.

—Herman VanderHeyden Amherstburg

Letters To The Editor Policy

• Letters must stay in the 250-350 word range please.

• We reserve the right to edit for spelling, grammar and length.

• We reserve the right to not publish letters that we view inflammatory, inaccurate or ‘rants’ against specific people, groups, religions, governments or ethnic organizations. Those rants are more suited to social media.

• We will gladly print letters commending specific people or organizations in the community, as we believe that this helps the community as a whole.

• Please sign your letters and provide a phone number for verification or questions if we need to reach out to you.

• Anonymous letters are not printed as we cannot verify their origin.