[news] School articles
As SYH will now be focusing more on the child victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake, here are two stories about the situations in schools in the areas affected by it.
Bread, milk make up post-quake school lunch
ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi--Some public schools in areas stricken by the Great East Japan Earthquake can only provide school lunches consisting of bread and milk, increasing concerns that students may suffer from malnutrition.
While many schools in the disaster-ravaged prefectures managed to resume serving regular lunches before Golden Week in May, more than 40 percent of 69 towns, cities and villages were unable to do so, citing reasons such as disaster-related damage to school lunch caterers.
At present, three cities and three towns in Miyagi Prefecture--Ishinomaki, Higashi-Matsushima, Tome, Onagawacho, Minami-Sanrikucho, Rifucho--and two cities in Iwate Prefecture--Kamaishi and Rikuzen-Takata--are unable to offer regular school lunches.
Some schools have only managed to offer students basic meals such as bread and milk since March 11. Experts say such meals lack much-needed vitamins and have called for nutrition to be improved, as many students are still commuting from evacuation centers.
During a lunch break at Sumiyoshi Middle School in Ishinomaki last Tuesday, lunches--a bread roll, jam, milk and a piece of frozen pineapple--were placed on each student's desk. No warm dishes were provided.
Shota Takahashi, a second-grade student and a member of the school's baseball club, finished eating his lunch in just three minutes.
"I've already eaten it," the 13-year-old said. "Because there's not enough food, I feel weak when I practice [baseball]. I get hungry again really quickly."
Sixty-four primary and middle schools in the city held first-day-of-school ceremonies on April 21. However, six facilities producing school lunches were devastated or suffered damage to boilers and other equipment in the disaster. Due to their limited capacity, the facilities can only prepare basic meals.
School lunch fees have been discounted by half as a result.
"In terms of their size and [nutritional] value, the lunches do not meet the needs of growing middle school students," said Koichi Suenaga, principal of the middle school.
Some parents asked if their children could also bring rice balls and other food items from home.
But the school was reluctant, as about 10 percent of its 324 students still commute from evacuation centers and are therefore unable to supplement the school's lunches with extra food.
The school's lunches are expected to improve next month when retort pouch food items such as hamburg and cooked fish are added to the menu. However, the earliest lunch menus are likely to return to pre-earthquake standards is July.
According to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry's standards for caloric intake by age, children aged 6 to 14 should consume 560 to 850 kilocalories per meal.
Other meal dietary guidelines include vitamin intake and nutritional composition.
But the lunches currently on offer in the eight municipalities fall short of these standards, prompting schools to find ways to prevent students from suffering from malnutrition.
School casualty questions / Parents seek answers for high death toll at primary school
ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi--Some of the parents of students at the municipal Okawa Primary School in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, have requested that the municipal board of education reexamine why nearly 70 percent of its students were killed by the March 11 tsunami.
Seventy-four of the school's 108 students were killed or went missing in the tsunami caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake, while a total of 13 students at four nearby schools were killed or went missing.
The parents submitted a letter of request Wednesday to the board of education. The letter said, "In order to avoid repeating a tragedy like this again, it should be thoroughly reexamined why the children could not be saved."
The letter demanded explanations about five points, such as actions taken before the tsunami reached the site and why a raised area so close to Kitakamigawa river was chosen as an evacuation area.
Citing other nearby schools as examples, the letter also said that in the other schools, "Students were guided to safe elevated sites and, although the school buildings were hit by the tsunami, the students' lives were protected under the schools' care."
Four other primary and middle schools are located along the Kitakamigawa river, which the tsunami rushed through. A total of 13 students of the four schools were killed or went missing.
According to the four schools and the board of education, the victims were engulfed by the tsunami after having left their schools.
In Yoshihama Primary School near the mouth of Kitakamigawa river, 15 people, including five students, were there when the tsunami struck. All of them were safe as they evacuated to the roof of a three-story school building.
In the case of Kitakami Middle School located on a hill on the north shore of the river, 14 third-year students in a school bus were heading home along the river, but the bus returned safely to the school after learning of the tsunami.
At Okawa Primary School, all of the students gathered in the schoolyard just after the quake. They were engulfed by the tsunami while heading for a raised area of land near Shin-Kitakami Ohashi bridge.
At a school meeting held April 9, a senior teacher, who was the only survivor among 11 teachers who were in the school at the time, told parents that they could not climb the mountain behind the school because of fallen trees.
The teacher said that while they were searching for an evacuation site, the students began moving toward the river embankment.
But some of the parents voiced their disbelief of this.
One of them said: "Teachers should have better understood the risk of the tsunami. There should have been enough time to evacuate to a higher place."
Source 1
Source 2
Bread, milk make up post-quake school lunch
ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi--Some public schools in areas stricken by the Great East Japan Earthquake can only provide school lunches consisting of bread and milk, increasing concerns that students may suffer from malnutrition.
While many schools in the disaster-ravaged prefectures managed to resume serving regular lunches before Golden Week in May, more than 40 percent of 69 towns, cities and villages were unable to do so, citing reasons such as disaster-related damage to school lunch caterers.
At present, three cities and three towns in Miyagi Prefecture--Ishinomaki, Higashi-Matsushima, Tome, Onagawacho, Minami-Sanrikucho, Rifucho--and two cities in Iwate Prefecture--Kamaishi and Rikuzen-Takata--are unable to offer regular school lunches.
Some schools have only managed to offer students basic meals such as bread and milk since March 11. Experts say such meals lack much-needed vitamins and have called for nutrition to be improved, as many students are still commuting from evacuation centers.
During a lunch break at Sumiyoshi Middle School in Ishinomaki last Tuesday, lunches--a bread roll, jam, milk and a piece of frozen pineapple--were placed on each student's desk. No warm dishes were provided.
Shota Takahashi, a second-grade student and a member of the school's baseball club, finished eating his lunch in just three minutes.
"I've already eaten it," the 13-year-old said. "Because there's not enough food, I feel weak when I practice [baseball]. I get hungry again really quickly."
Sixty-four primary and middle schools in the city held first-day-of-school ceremonies on April 21. However, six facilities producing school lunches were devastated or suffered damage to boilers and other equipment in the disaster. Due to their limited capacity, the facilities can only prepare basic meals.
School lunch fees have been discounted by half as a result.
"In terms of their size and [nutritional] value, the lunches do not meet the needs of growing middle school students," said Koichi Suenaga, principal of the middle school.
Some parents asked if their children could also bring rice balls and other food items from home.
But the school was reluctant, as about 10 percent of its 324 students still commute from evacuation centers and are therefore unable to supplement the school's lunches with extra food.
The school's lunches are expected to improve next month when retort pouch food items such as hamburg and cooked fish are added to the menu. However, the earliest lunch menus are likely to return to pre-earthquake standards is July.
According to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry's standards for caloric intake by age, children aged 6 to 14 should consume 560 to 850 kilocalories per meal.
Other meal dietary guidelines include vitamin intake and nutritional composition.
But the lunches currently on offer in the eight municipalities fall short of these standards, prompting schools to find ways to prevent students from suffering from malnutrition.
School casualty questions / Parents seek answers for high death toll at primary school
ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi--Some of the parents of students at the municipal Okawa Primary School in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, have requested that the municipal board of education reexamine why nearly 70 percent of its students were killed by the March 11 tsunami.
Seventy-four of the school's 108 students were killed or went missing in the tsunami caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake, while a total of 13 students at four nearby schools were killed or went missing.
The parents submitted a letter of request Wednesday to the board of education. The letter said, "In order to avoid repeating a tragedy like this again, it should be thoroughly reexamined why the children could not be saved."
The letter demanded explanations about five points, such as actions taken before the tsunami reached the site and why a raised area so close to Kitakamigawa river was chosen as an evacuation area.
Citing other nearby schools as examples, the letter also said that in the other schools, "Students were guided to safe elevated sites and, although the school buildings were hit by the tsunami, the students' lives were protected under the schools' care."
Four other primary and middle schools are located along the Kitakamigawa river, which the tsunami rushed through. A total of 13 students of the four schools were killed or went missing.
According to the four schools and the board of education, the victims were engulfed by the tsunami after having left their schools.
In Yoshihama Primary School near the mouth of Kitakamigawa river, 15 people, including five students, were there when the tsunami struck. All of them were safe as they evacuated to the roof of a three-story school building.
In the case of Kitakami Middle School located on a hill on the north shore of the river, 14 third-year students in a school bus were heading home along the river, but the bus returned safely to the school after learning of the tsunami.
At Okawa Primary School, all of the students gathered in the schoolyard just after the quake. They were engulfed by the tsunami while heading for a raised area of land near Shin-Kitakami Ohashi bridge.
At a school meeting held April 9, a senior teacher, who was the only survivor among 11 teachers who were in the school at the time, told parents that they could not climb the mountain behind the school because of fallen trees.
The teacher said that while they were searching for an evacuation site, the students began moving toward the river embankment.
But some of the parents voiced their disbelief of this.
One of them said: "Teachers should have better understood the risk of the tsunami. There should have been enough time to evacuate to a higher place."
Source 1
Source 2