FRAC Report on School Breakfasts: Boston Participation Excels but MA State Participation Way Behind

Below is a recent press release from the Food Research Action Center with links to their School Breakfast Report Card and Report on Large School Districts.

As you will see, Boston has excellent participation (in the top 10 of urban schools) but the rest of the state lags WAY behind.  MA is 42nd in the nation and the worst of the New England region next to New Hampshire (see Table 1 of FRAC report).  Only 43 out of 100 low income children (e.g. kids eligible for free or reduced price lunch) get school breakfasts. According to FRAC, if MA took steps to increase that number statewide to 70 out of 100 kids getting breakfasts - like kids in Boston - the state could pull in $19M in federal child nutrition dollars (Table 4 of FRAC report).

Here's a link to a Jan 15, 2013 Public News Service story highlighting the school breakfast participation in Boston schools, but noting the serious under-participation overall in MA: "Breakfast Club' Grows in Massachusetts" http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/30326-1

Coalition members are urged to find out what your local school districts are doing and encourage them to step up to the plate, as well as encourage the Governor, Department of Education and the Massachusetts Legislature to work collectively to improve school meals participation for all our kids. If you need local participation data on your schools, let me know.

The FRAC Scorecard also provides excellent examples of what other states have done to increase school breakfast and lunch participation, many policies which could be embraced in Massachusetts!. Feel free to send the PNS news article and FRAC reports to your local newspapers and legislators. 

FRAC School Breakfast Scorecard: http://frac.org/pdf/Scorecard_SY2011-2012.pdf [Editor's Note: Link is no longer active]
FRAC Urban Breakfast Report:  http://frac.org/pdf/urban_school_breakfast_sy2011-2012.pdf [Editor's Note: Link is no longer active]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Food Research and Action Center <jadach@frac.org>
Date: Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 8:59 AM
Subject: School Breakfast Participation Hits Two Major Milestones, Finds FRAC Report
 

School Breakfast Participation Hits Two Major Milestones, Finds FRAC Report
More Low-Income Students and More Schools Participating in Breakfast

Contact: Jennifer Adach, 202.986.2200 x3018

Washington, D.C. – January 15, 2013 – School breakfast hit key milestones in school and student participation during the 2011-2012 school year. The Food Research and Action Center’s (FRAC) School Breakfast Scorecard (pdf) found that, for the first time nationally, more than half of all low-income students who participated in school lunch also participated in school breakfast and more than 90 percent of schools that operate the National School Lunch Program also offered the School Breakfast Program. 

Such milestones, noted FRAC, were driven by efforts at the federal, state, and local level to reach out to students, to eliminate barriers and streamline administrative processes, and to launch breakfast in the classroom programs. Overall, more than 10.5 million children received a free or reduced-price breakfast each school day during the 2011-2012 school year, an increase of 738,869 children from the previous year. Every state contributed to this growth, and 10 states recorded double-digit increases from the previous year.

“More low-income children are eating breakfast and more schools are offering it, and that’s good news for children’s health and well-being,” said FRAC President Jim Weill. “Since FRAC launched its national school breakfast campaign in 1988, the share of schools participating has grown from less than 50 percent to more than 90 percent, and the number of children has grown from 31 percent to 50 percent. Such progress is to be celebrated, but it also shows states and school districts the path for moving forward and achieving even more successes in school breakfast.”

FRAC measures School Breakfast Program participation by comparing the number of low-income children receiving school breakfast to the number of such children receiving school lunch. Participation among states ranged from a high of 70.2 in breakfast for every 100 in lunch in New Mexico to a low of 33.9 per 100 in Utah. Five states – Kentucky, New Mexico, South Carolina, Vermont, and West Virginia – and the District of Columbia reached more than 60 per 100.

Since FRAC has been tracking breakfast participation, several strategies have emerged as contributing to higher participation rates. Chief among them is offering breakfast free of charge to all children, as well as moving breakfast out of the cafeteria and into the classroom after the bell. In addition, a new federal option, Community Eligibility, is showing promise to help states achieve large participation gains. The FRAC report found that the first round of Community Eligibility pilot states—Illinois, Kentucky, and Michigan—all saw larger breakfast participation increases among low-income children than the national average in the 2011-2012 school year.

A separate report by FRAC, School Breakfast: Making it Work in Large School Districts (pdf), echoed many of these findings. Comparing school breakfast participation and policies in 57 large, mostly urban school districts across the country, the report found that the school districts with the highest participation all have large-scale programs that allow students to eat breakfast in their classrooms at the beginning of the school day. The top 10 school districts all offer breakfast free to all or many students throughout their district, and all have breakfast in the classroom programs in at least one-third of their schools.

Among the surveyed school districts, participation ranged from a high of 92.8 low-income students in breakfast per 100 in lunch in Newark Public Schools to a low of 33.5 per 100 in Brentwood (Long Island, N.Y.).

Low participation means missed meals for hungry children and missed dollars for the state and city. If states could increase participation so they reach 70 children with breakfast for every 100 that also eat lunch, FRAC estimates that an additional 4.1 million low-income children would be added to the breakfast program and states would have received more than $1 billion in added child nutrition funding.

“Getting more children to start the day with breakfast fights hunger and improves nutrition and education outcomes. FRAC’s research is showing that there are proven strategies that lead to higher participation rates, which means that more children experience the benefits of breakfast,” said Weill. “States and schools that want to get serious about increasing breakfast participation have to get serious about making breakfast more accessible to students, whether that’s looking at breakfast in the classroom or other proven strategies.”

# # #

The full report, School Breakfast Scorecard, is available at www.frac.org. 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 70 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 School Breakfast: Making it Work in Large School Districts, FRAC surveyed 57 large urban school districts across the country on school breakfast participation rates and policies. The full report is available at www.frac.org.