FRAC - School Breakfast Outreach Center

School Breakfast Outreach Center

Why Increase School Breakfast Participation?
Key Strategies for School Breakfast Expansion
Take Action!
State/Local Data Report Toolkit
Background on School Breakfast
Resources and Reports
Breakfast Outreach Sites

Many children do not eat a nutritious breakfast every morning. Often families are living on very tight budgets and can't afford to provide good breakfasts at home every day nor the money to buy them at school. Regardless of Income, families today live busy lives that often make it difficult to sit down long enough in the morning to eat a nutritious breakfast, and sometimes children are not physically capable of eating breakfast at home when they first wake up.

Why Increase School Breakfast Participation?

Expanded availability, accessibility, and participation in school breakfast is one of the best ways to support the health and educational potential of children, particularly low-income children. Adequate nutrition and freedom from hunger are absolutely essential for good health and academic achievement, and yet these goals are not always achievable for families who are struggling to make ends meet. Federally-funded school breakfast programs make critical nutritional contributions to children's health and education.

Key Strategies for School Breakfast Expansion

1. Universal breakfast programs (i.e. breakfast at no charge) with effective district-wide promotion.
Providing school breakfast at no charge to all students is a critical strategy for increasing participation and reducing the stigma children may feel about participating in a program "for poor kids." But simply offering the program is not enough; it must be accompanied by effective promotion efforts to students and families. In addition, nutrition education can help to develop life-long habits about the importance of breakfast.

2. Service methods that make breakfast part of the school day.
Making breakfast a part of the school day dramatically increases participation by making it convenient and accessible to all, no matter how students arrive at school. This can be achieved in a number of ways, taking into account the unique needs of each district. Whether breakfast is served in the classroom, the hallways, second period or on the playground, the flexibility to eat during the morning in school is essential to insure optimum participation.

3. Administrative support and leadership in implementing programs.
When superintendents and principals put their full support behind a universal breakfast program with alternative service strategies, participation reaches the fullest potential. Efforts to educate principals, superintendents and other administrators about the health, educational and financial gains from school breakfast are essential to the continued expansion of the program.

4. Partnerships with anti-hunger organizations and State agencies.
A key ingredient to moving forward with breakfast expansion is the support of program and outreach specialists who can assist a school district in analyzing barriers and creating effective solutions. Partnerships with anti-hunger organizations and the agencies that administer the School Breakfast Program at the state level are crucial to providing the technical assistance and support that is needed across the country. In particular, anti-hunger organizations can play a crucial role in advocating strongly for improvements in the school breakfast program, bringing successful strategies to the attention of community groups and state-level stakeholders who want to improve children’s health and educational achievement, and building coalitions to work for school breakfast expansion.

Take Action!

What Can Advocates Do?

1. Create a state breakfast report

• District by district report of school breakfast/lunch participation by low-income children.

• Helps identify the districts that are doing a poor job with getting breakfast to kids.

• Can be a short report and isn’t too time intensive.

• Requires getting data from the state agency - use State/Local Data Report Toolkit resources (below).

2. Conduct targeted outreach to school districts

• Select a few districts that are interested in expanding breakfast by making it part of the school day, but need help to do so.

• Work with them to identify barriers and solutions to implementing alternative service models.

• Help them obtain start-up funding and technical assistance from other school districts, state personnel or the Dairy Council.

3. Hold a “school breakfast summit”

• Bring together key organizations such as the state child nutrition agency, Action for Healthy Kids, Dairy Council and other interested parties.

• Share current work and develop strategies for working collectively in the state to expand breakfast participation.

What can school officials do?

Provide administrative leadership and support to insure that every school in the district offers breakfast and that every student has the opportunity to eat.

• Develop and implement effective School Wellness Policies that include insuring that no child begins the school day hungry.

• Include school breakfast participation as a measure of success for each school building administrator.

• Seek input from Food Service Staff on the timing of breakfast and lunch to insure maximum participation.

• Engage in a rigorous outreach campaign each year to get meal applications from all potentially eligible families and to promote the healthfulness of school meals.

• Encourage students and their families to take advantage of the benefits of school meals through multiple communications throughout the school year.

What can state legislators do?

1. Pass state breakfast requirements

Many states already have laws mandating that certain schools participate in the program, at least in schools with significant concentrations of low-income students, to guarantee that the School Breakfast Program is widely available. Generally, requirements are linked to a school's percentage of low-income students. This is defined by the proportion of students who qualify for free and reduced-price meals, or by the proportion of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches. The percentage required before the school must offer a breakfast program varies widely. For example, West Virginia requires all schools to participate, while in Washington State all schools with more than 40 percent of lunches served at free or reduced price must offer breakfast. State legislators in those states that have not yet passed legislation, or where legislation can be improved, should introduce bills that would require an expansion of school breakfast programs.

2. Provide state funding for breakfast

To assist schools in providing breakfast to students, over half the states provide state funds for one purpose or another related to school breakfast: as additional per meal reimbursements (to supplement the federal per meal reimbursement); as start-up and/or expansion funds to finance costs related to the start of new programs or expansion of participation in existing programs; as payment for the costs of outreach; as incentive grants; or to pay for supervision costs. Some states, such as Pennsylvania, provide additional funding in reimbursements for lunch if breakfast is served. State legislators should work to increase state support for school meals in general, and breakfast expansion in particular.

A current list of state legislation and funding can be found in the annual School Breakfast Scorecard published each year by FRAC.

State/Local Data Report Toolkit

Follow this link to the Toolkit.

Resources and Reports

Breakfast Outreach Sites

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Factsheets on Child Nutrition Programs

School Breakfast | School Lunch | Afterschool | Summer Food
Women, Infants, and Children | Child and Adult Care Food Program