Barriere Secondary School (BSS) on Tuesday and Thursdays offers up a free hot breakfast program to the entire school, serving between 70 to 80 students on these days.
In the past this program was run on a voluntary basis by Mrs. Buchanan and Mrs. Ross, both staff members at the school, and then most recently contracted out to another community member.
For the new school year, the breakfast program and cafeteria are now being run by BSS principal, Ken Rife, and vice-principal Cory Carmichael.
Principal Rife says they decided to take this on to further service the kids at BSS as they both feel this is a very important program for their students.
Being huge advocates of small communities and 4-H, the principals decided they would like to support the local economy, and their students, by buying their meat for the school’s breakfast program and lunch program at the annual Provincial Winter Fair auction.
Principal Rife says they did purchased a side of beef at the sale, and the meat is being used in the students breakfast and lunch program.
Local businesses also supported this school initiative; Rainer’s Custom Cutting gave the school a break on the cutting and wrapping of the meat, and then Desiree and Chad Blair from Metro Reload, a Kamloops based sand and gravel company who do a lot of work in the North Thompson, heard that the school was going to buy a side of beef and stepped up and paid for the meat and donated it all to the school.
Both Desiree and Chad say they understand the importance of small communities and helping out good causes within them.
Rife says on behalf of Barriere Secondary School, he would like to publicly thank Rainer’s Custom Cutting and Metro Reload and Chad and Desiree Blair for their generous contributions to the school.