Reducing hunger and poverty — school breakfast pays off
More low-income children in New Mexico and across the country are getting the nutrition they need to learn and thrive by participating in the school breakfast program, according to the annual School Breakfast Scorecard, released recently by the Food Research & Action Center, or FRAC.
FRAC is the leading national nonprofit organization working to eradicate poverty-related hunger and undernutrition in the United States. And, while many children remain in need, on an average school day during the 2016-17 school year, nearly 12.2 million low-income students participated in the national school breakfast program.
According to Jim Weill, president of the Food Research & Action Center, “The evidence is overwhelming that efforts to increase school breakfast participation pay off — less hunger, better test scores and improved student health, to name a few.”
Community availability
The biggest increase in school breakfast participation among low-income children has been in states in which the majority of schools offers breakfast at no charge to all students (most commonly through community eligibility) and serve breakfast after the start of the school day, or after the first bell.
Community eligibility is a provision of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Act of 2010 that allows any district, group of schools or individual school with 40 percent or more identified students who are eligible for free school meals to offer free school meals to all students.
New Mexico ranks No. 2
The School Breakfast Scorecard ranks states and the District of Columbia on the basis of participation of low-income children in the school breakfast program. West Virginia topped the list, with New Mexico and the District of Columbia coming in second and third, respectively. West Virginia and New Mexico also exceeded FRAC’s goal for states of reaching 70 lowincome children with school breakfast for every 100 who ate school lunch.
The impact of legislation
State legislation that requires or encourages school districts to offer breakfast at no charge to all students after the bell eliminates the two main barriers to school breakfast participation — timing and stigma. Legislation has been instrumental in achieving sustainable success in the District of Columbia, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and West Virginia, as well as Nevada, for requiring high-poverty schools to implement breakfast after the bell, free breakfast to all students, or both.
Breakfast after the bell
Both the School Breakfast Scorecard and “School Breakfast: Making it Work in Large School Districts,” a companion report to the Scorecard, highlight how community eligibility and alternative breakfast models that move breakfast out of the cafeteria and after the first bell have been instrumental in increasing school breakfast participation. Offering breakfast after start of the school day helps schools and students overcome common barriers such as late bus arrivals, tight household budgets and the stigma associated with school breakfast as being only for low-income children.
Read the School Breakfast Scorecard and the large school district report on Food Research & Action Center’s school breakfast page.
Peggy O’Mara is the past editor of Mothering Magazine and has lived and worked in New Mexico for 50 years.