Cordon Bleu chef fêted for school breakfast program efforts

Sandra Copeland has always enjoyed cooking and hated any kind of shopping — except for when it came to combing through grocery stores for bargains

Copeland trained in Ottawa as a chef, finishing at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris in 1991-92. She had cooked food from scratch since she was a teenager, but the famed culinary school took cooking from scratch to another level.

“When we learned to make roast chicken, the chicken was dead. The feathers were mostly off, but the feet and the head were still attached. We had to gut it and singe the feathers off,” she says.

When Copeland returned to Ottawa, she embarked on a career as a chef working in Ottawa-area restaurants including Auberge Heritage in Cumberland and Le St. Ô on Beechwood Avenue.  

“I would sling 50-pound bags of potatoes over my shoulder and walk up the stairs,” she says.

But Copeland’s career got sidetracked by a tumour that compressed her spinal cord, making it difficult to walk. She got her second wind as breakfast program co-ordinator at Carson Grove Elementary School. For the past 14 years, she has planned, shopped and prepped nutritious food for kids.  

“It’s my second career,” she says. “I see the kids and I know I’m making a difference.”

Last week, Copeland learned she was one of five “Celebrate Moi” winners honoured by the Metro grocery chain for going above and beyond.

Carson Grove has about 300 students. On some days, as many as 180 portions of food are distributed through the school’s food programs, including the breakfast program, principal Aaron Hawley says.

“It gives them the food they need to learn. When students pass her in the hall, they associate her with a good feeling,” Hawley says.

Copeland learned young how to suss out bargains when shopping for food.

“We weren’t wealthy growing up. When I went shopping with my mom, we bought the stuff on sale,” she says. “We wouldn’t buy strawberries until the local farms were growing them.”

When Copeland started at Carson Grove 14 years ago, she prepared about 65 breakfast portions a day. There are now three different programs at the school. Copeland works primarily in the breakfast program, but there’s also food for students who have forgotten their lunches as well as a weekend program.

Breakfast choices include fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grain cereals in baggies to munch on, oatmeal and corn squares, milk, hardboiled eggs, cheese and tubes of yogurt. The program serves fruit rather than juice. In 2016, when a wave of Syrian refugees arrived in the neighbourhood, Copeland added halal food to her repertoire.

She will buy a box of bananas for $24 at a wholesale grocery store. There’s about 100 bananas per box. Some are distributed whole. The spotty ones are peeled and wrapped and those left over are served as bakeshop-worthy banana muffins and banana bread.

“Pretty much everything is used except for the peels, and they go to the compost,” she says.

Copeland started out working a few days every morning, but, as her health improved, she spent more time at Carson Grove. She has a small kitchen and access to the staff room and starts work at 6:30 a.m., ending the breakfast distribution around 9 a.m. She works as a kindergarten assistant for part of the day, then returns to prepping food for the next day later in the afternoon.

Copeland is often at the school five hours a day. She gets paid a token amount, says Hawley, who adds he often has to remind her to slow down.

“This kind of work never ends. We have to set some limits. If we let her, she’d sleep here. She’ll stay late to make sure everything’s just right in the morning. It’s her superpower.”

The breakfast program at Carson Grove, like those at 204 elementary and secondary schools throughout the city, is supported by the Ottawa Network for Education. Schools are responsible for buying the food and the preparation, president and CEO Heather Norris says.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, school food programs fed about 13,500 students in Ottawa, Norris says. That has increased to about 22,000. As well, each breakfast used to cost about $1. Because of inflation, that has risen to about $1.50.

Food insecurity among school-age children is on the rise, Norris says.

“For the first time, we’re seeing high school students ask if they can take food to sustain themselves for the whole day,” she says. “Elementary students are asking if they can take it home to their families and siblings. Food programs exist in schools where you would not expect it.”

This year, the Ottawa Network for Education will distribute almost $3 million in funding for school food programs, money that comes from governments, the city and fundraising.

In April 2024, the federal government announced a new National School Food Program, with $1 billion in spending over five years, calling the funding “a generational investment in the future of our kids.”

The funding is administered through the provinces. In December, Ontario signed a three-year agreement for $108.4 million in funding, with a possible two-year extension, Norris says.

The money is starting to flow to agencies like the Ottawa Network for Education, which is using it to increase its reach to new schools and to help others that are running out of money. Before the pandemic, the network would receive requests to add nutrition programs to one or two schools a year. This year’s plan is to add 12 to 15 schools, Norris says.

“We couldn’t do what we do without people like Sandra. She’s got a real rapport with the students and she’s incredibly skilled. She’s a rock star.”

The Celebrate Moi award brings Copeland a million Metro Moi points, the equivalent of about $8,000. She already has plans to use the points to supplement Carson Grove’s weekend food program.

“I might buy a tub of really good ice cream for myself, though,” she says.

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