Students do better when they’ve been fed. And sharing a meal ends the free-food stigma, while giving kids a chance to practice teamwork.
The third-graders of Room 105A were
ready for their morning routine. Just before the 8:30 a.m. bell, they
lined up with their teacher outside P.S. 11 in Jersey City, N.J., all
chatter and fidgets and giggles as they waited for the first bell to
ring.
Brrrrring!
In neat rows of two, they walked down the hall and into the classroom,
hung up their backpacks, and took their seats. Three students at the
front of the room unzipped insulated red bags that had been delivered
moments before. They circulated throughout the class of 25, carefully
placing a cold orange juice container and warm plastic bag with the
day’s free, in-school breakfast on each desk.
And just like that, a regular Tuesday was transformed into Pancake Day — pretty much everyone’s favorite.
“I
really like this breakfast,” said Elisa Tadros, 9, who was savoring her
maple-flavored, whole-wheat miniature pancakes. “It tastes really
good.” Her seatmate Ramia Fawzy, 10, had already finished her meal and
was moving on to the morning’s second activity: logging onto her laptop
to access a literacy skills app.
This
innovative approach to school-based nutrition is called “breakfast
after the bell” — a strategy as straightforward as its name. Instead of
asking students to show up early and come to the cafeteria to eat,
schools like P.S. 11 deliver breakfast to students right at the start of
the school day.
The
practice significantly boosts the number of students who fuel up at
school: in typical before-school cafeteria programs, only 53 percent of
eligible students eat breakfast, on average. Schools that serve
breakfast after the bell report major gains, with 80 percent or more of
students taking part.
Educators
say it is not only convenient, but also minimizes the potential stigma
of arriving early for a separate program for low-income students. And
the simple act of sharing a meal is itself a learning experience, a
chance for students to practice teamwork, responsibility and serving
others.
“It
just has so many positive effects,” said P.S. 11 Principal Cleopatra
Wingard. “Students used to visit the nurse throughout the morning for
food. We don’t see that anymore. They serve one another and see the
importance of a balanced meal. And it also helps get kids here on
time — they are often running up the stairs in the morning, just to make
sure they don’t miss breakfast.”
American schools have served
breakfast to low-income students since the 1960s, as an offshoot of the
National School Lunch Program. The programs take on the stubborn shame
of childhood hunger in the United States: some 6.4 million children live
in homes that do not reliably have enough food on the table, about one
in five U.S. households, according to federal data from 2015.
The
country is on track to serve 12.4 million free and reduced-price school
breakfasts this school year, to students who qualify under family
income eligibility guidelines set by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. It’s a record high.
The number of subsidized breakfasts has grown by about 50 percent in the past decade, from 7.9 million meals in 2006.
States
and school districts administer the program and receive cash subsidies
from the federal government to help pay for the meals, which cost around
$1.75 each. USDA subsidies for the School Breakfast Program will top
$4.2 billion in 2016–2017 — a considerable investment, but far less than
for the National School Lunch Program, which is on track to top $13.6
billion in subsidies and provides 22 million free and reduced-price
lunches nationwide.
In
addition to providing subsidies, the federal government also regulates
what can and cannot go on students’ meal trays. It is an arrangement
prone to gaffes and political fistfights, especially when you throw
finicky kids and regional food traditions into the mix. The most modern
iteration dates back to a Reagan-era proposal that characterized ketchup
(and fries) as a vegetable, stretches across the childhood obesity
explosion of the 1990s and early 2000s, and reaches former first lady
Michelle Obama, who advocated for stricter school nutrition standards
and health initiatives under her “Let’s Move” campaign.
One
result was the bipartisan 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which
required fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains and other changes to
students’ lunch trays. The regulations were widely criticized by state
leaders and GOP members of Congress for being overly restrictive and
forcing schools to serve food that students would not eat, and lawmakers
have since introduced several bills to either soften or repeal the law,
without result. A series of studies examined student eating habits in
Seattle, Texas, Connecticut and Massachusetts and found children made
healthier food choices — such as eating more fresh fruit — after the
standards were implemented in cafeterias starting in 2012.
Rolling
back the nutrition rules was a stated goal of President Trump’s
campaign, and in May 2017, his appointee at the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Secretary Sonny Perdue, issued a proclamation doing just
that. It allows schools to serve children flavored milk, and food with
more sodium than the original rules allowed. States also can be granted
exemptions from serving only whole grains in coming years, which the law
requires.
“If
kids aren’t eating the food, and it’s ending up in the trash, they
aren’t getting any nutrition — thus undermining the intent of the
program,” Perdue said, lauding the return of decision-making authority
to local school districts instead of the federal government.
Can subsidized school breakfast continue
to grow in the current political climate? While the Trump
Administration’s budget proposal targets a host of anti-poverty
initiatives for deep cuts in spending, funding school meals is not among
them.
Other
sources of nutrition support for low-income students are slated for
steep reductions, however, such a proposed 25 percent cut to food stamps
under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program (SNAP) and the
elimination of all $1.2 billion in federal funding for 21st Century
Community Learning Centers, which support after-school enrichment
programs that include snacks and meals. Administration officials have
said that, while the programs are supposed to feed children and help
them at school, they are ineffective. However, a 2013–2014 U.S. Department of Education study
reported that between one-third and half of participating students
earned better grades in math and English and improved their homework and
in-class participation.
Outside
of the budget process, a key provision in the school-nutrition law that
has fueled the growth of breakfast participation may be headed for
reform by Congress: the Community Eligibility Provision. Under that
rule, schools or districts where more than 40 percent of families
receive direct assistance, such as food stamps or welfare benefits, can
receive extra subsidies to make breakfast universal by offering free
in-school meals to all students, whether or not they meet income
eligibility guidelines. In Jersey City, for example, every school
provides breakfast to all students, even though only about 70 percent of
families qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, said Barbarito
Ramos, acting food service director.
Advocates
support universal school meals because it cuts down on paperwork,
minimizes stigma and boosts participation. But some conservatives,
particularly Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, have
criticized the practice for unfairly subsidizing meals for families who
are able to pay. In past sessions, GOP representatives have proposed
reforms such as raising the threshold to 60 percent, an idea poised to
take root.
0utside the beltway, state
and local leaders have moved aggressively over the past decade to
expand school-breakfast participation by instituting “breakfast after
the bell.”
Lawmakers
in 10 states, plus the District of Columbia, have mandated or funded
breakfast after the bell: Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois,
Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. The
practice is officially “recommended” by state law in New Jersey, home to
P.S. 11. And bills mandating the practice are circulating in
statehouses in Maine, Massachusetts and Washington. Several state
education departments have used regulation to promote the practice,
including by specifying that minutes spent on in-class meals can count
toward required instructional time.
Schools that shift breakfast programs to the classroom report enormous growth.
For example, at Parker Middle School in the Taunton district in southern Massachusetts, student breakfast participation grew from 26 percent to 95 percent after it was offered during the school day, according to Children’s Healthwatch.
School officials reported that the number of nurse visits dropped by 24
percent, which they estimated boosted on-task learning time by 18,000
minutes overall.
Big-city districts such as Chicago and Houston have doubled school breakfast participation by moving breakfast out of the cafeteria and after the bell, according to the No Kid Hungry Center for Best Practices
campaign. In Houston, where 80 percent of students qualify for free or
reduced-price school meals, just 30 percent were eating school breakfast
when it was offered before the start of the day. After a successful
2009 pilot involving 30 schools, it was expanded to all elementary and
middle schools in 2010, and the number of students eating breakfast
doubled. Two years later, nearly four out of five students eating school
lunches also ate school breakfast.
The
programs look different depending on the age of the students, with most
high schools swapping out meal delivery for “grab and go” kiosks in the
hallway, so fast-moving teenagers can pick up a meal to bring to
homeroom. Keeping track of it all, not to mention keeping classrooms
clean, can be daunting to some principals, teachers, food-service
workers and custodians.
In
Jersey City, some building leaders were sold on the idea at the outset,
but others were concerned about the logistical challenges, said
Superintendent Marcia V. Lyles. What would serving a meal at the start
of the school day mean in terms of lost instructional time and expanded
clean-up duties?
“At
the end of the day, I just had to mandate it,” she said. “We are always
having a conversation about what we can and cannot control. We can’t
control poverty, that’s true. But when we have an opportunity to
mitigate those factors, like serving breakfast, which is so
important — the question is, why aren’t we doing that?”
Serving
breakfast after the bell “isn’t really that hard,” she said. “And the
principals and the people in the schools really recognized its
importance. This, for me, is like preschool and other readiness
programs. We are addressing our equity issues and making sure kids come
to school ready to learn.”
That
is a driving interest at P.S. 11, said Assistant Principal Mary K.
Truesdale. “There are some children who would not have gotten any
breakfast without this.”
Being
ready to learn is important — but there’s a coziness factor too.
Getting together in the morning to share a common meal before a long
school day is, well, nice.
“They
come and interact a little,” said teacher Kristin Haviland. “It’s a
good way to practice their manners and having a quiet conversation.”
Her student Grace Santos, 8, agreed.
“We
eat, and sometimes we talk a little,” she said. “But when we’re done
eating, we can go straight on to our next thing, and we have energy to
do more things in our day.”
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