FRAC: Press Release - Low Rate of Participation in School Breakfast Means More Hunger, Less Learning, and Weaker State Economies

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jen Adach, 202-986-2200, jadach@frac.org

Low Rate of Participation in School Breakfast Means
More Hunger, Less Learning, and Weaker State Economies
FRAC Calls for Congressional Steps to Increase Participation in the Program; Encourages States and Schools to Start Classroom Breakfast Programs

Washington, D.C. – January 14, 2009 – Participation in the School Breakfast Program grew to include 8.5 million children during the 2007-2008 school year, an increase of four percent over the previous school year, but the program still misses more than half of America’s eligible low-income children. Only 46 percent of eligible low-income children started the day with a healthy morning meal in 2007-2008, according to the Food Research and Action Center’s annual School Breakfast Scorecard.

In the report, FRAC called for Congress to increase funding for school breakfast and other child nutrition programs.

“This is a time of growing hunger and economic distress around the nation, but there are important opportunities to respond for both the short-term and the long-term. The coming economic recovery bill and this year’s Child Nutrition Reauthorization are such opportunities. Congress must take steps to help low-income families in both, and that includes strategies to increase breakfast participation, as well as boost investments in other nutrition programs,” said Jim Weill, FRAC president. “School breakfast improves children's learning and behavior, fosters healthy eating habits, and reduces hunger. It’s one of the best and most cost-effective investments we can make to ensure our nation’s future. And, the federal dollars help local economies.”

All of the child nutrition programs, including the School Breakfast Program, are set to be reauthorized this year as part of Child Nutrition Reauthorization. Congress is anticipated to start reviewing the programs as early as February.

FRAC measures the reach of the School Breakfast Program by comparing the number of low-income children receiving school breakfast to the number of such children receiving school lunch. Nationally, if the number of low-income children who participated in the School Breakfast Program increased from 46 to 60 for every 100 who participated in the lunch program, almost 2.5 million more children would eat a healthy school breakfast every day, and states would receive an additional $561 million in child nutrition funding.

Two states, New Mexico and South Carolina, demonstrate that this is an achievable goal. New Mexico reaches 63 percent of eligible low-income children, and South Carolina reaches 60 percent. FRAC points out that this goal is reachable even in difficult budget times, since nearly 100 percent of breakfast costs for low-income children are paid by the federal government.

FRAC also issued a separate report, Breakfast in America’s Big Cities, which took the same approach to measuring breakfast participation in 19 large urban districts. Participation during the 2006-2007 school year ranged from a high of 89 percent in Newark to a low of 29 percent in Chicago. FRAC estimated that if each surveyed district was able to reach 70 low-income children with breakfast for every 100 that received free and reduced-price lunch, a goal reached by numerous cities, more than half a million additional students would have eaten a healthy school breakfast and the urban districts would have collected an additional $123 million in federal child nutrition funding.

According to the city report, school districts that offered breakfast free to all students, served breakfast in the classroom at the start of the school day rather than in the cafeteria, or offered bagged “grab and go” breakfasts from carts in the hallway generally experienced higher rates of breakfast participation. In fact, the three top performing school districts – Newark (N.J.), Boston (Mass.), and Minneapolis (Minn.) – all operated programs that served breakfast in the classroom at no charge to the students.

FRAC outlined a series of recommendations that the new Administration, Congress, states, and school districts can take to improve participation in the School Breakfast Program, including:

Increasing federal investments for the program in the coming Child Nutrition Reauthorization in ways that help expand participation, bolster outreach efforts, and improve nutrition quality;
Enacting, or strengthening, state law mandates that require schools, especially those with significant numbers of low-income students, to operate School Breakfast Programs, as well as providing state funding to support programs that offer breakfast free to all students and provide breakfast in the classroom, a strategy more and more districts are using to get the educational day off to a good start; and
Encouraging school districts to operate programs that offer breakfast free to all students and to start in-classroom breakfast programs.

About the reports:
The full report, School Breakfast Scorecard, is available at www.frac.org/pdf/breakfast08.pdf. To measure the reach of the School Breakfast Program in each state, FRAC compares the number of schools and the number of low-income children that participate in breakfast to those that participate in the National School Lunch Program. FRAC also sets a participation goal of reaching 60 children with breakfast for every 100 receiving lunch as a way to gauge each state’s progress and the costs of underparticipation in the program.

For Breakfast in America’s Big Cities, FRAC surveyed 19 large urban school districts across the country on school breakfast participation rates and policies. The school districts included in the report are: Baltimore City Public Schools (Md.); Boston Public Schools (Mass.); Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (N.C.); Chicago Public Schools (Ill.); Clark County School District, Las Vegas (Nev.); Columbus Public Schools (Ohio); Denver Public Schools (Colo.); District of Columbia Public Schools (D.C.); Houston Independent School District (Tex.); Los Angeles Unified School District (Calif.); Miami-Dade County Public Schools (Fla.); Minneapolis School District (Minn.); Newark Public Schools (N.J.); New York City Department of Education (N.Y.); Oklahoma City Public Schools (Okla.); Omaha Public Schools (Neb.); Seattle Public Schools (Wash.); School District of Philadelphia (Pa.); and Wichita Public Schools (Kan.). For urban school districts, FRAC sets a higher participation goal of 70 percent. The full report is available at www.frac.org/pdf/urbanbreakfast08.pdf.

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The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) is the leading national nonprofit organization working to improve public policies and public-private partnerships to eradicate hunger and undernutrition in the United States.