The school breakfast program, an adjunct to the longer-established school lunch and school milk programs, is reaching a growing number of low-income children — 12.1 million daily during the 2015-16 school year — says a report from an anti-hunger group.
The group, Food Research and Action Center, said the Community Eligibility Provision — a target of conservative House Republicans for cuts — was a driving force behind the overall rise in the number of children participating in school breakfast.
Nearly 21,000 schools utilize the provision allowing them to serve free meals to all students in poor neighborhoods. The House Education Committee, as part of an unsuccessful child-nutrition bill, voted last year to raise greatly the threshold for use of the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities said the higher threshold would disqualify 40 percent of participating schools. One-third of them were in Kentucky, New York State, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia, it said.
More than 30 million pupils a day eat a meal through the school lunch program, more than double the 14.2 million served by school breakfast during the 2015-16 school year. Some 12.1 million of the breakfast participants were fed for free or at a reduced price, up by 433,000 students, or 3.7 percent, from the previous year.
Nationwide, 56 percent of the children receiving a free or reduced-price lunch also were served by the school breakfast program. FRAC has a goal of 70 percent. Two states, West Virginia with 84 percent, and New Mexico with 73 percent, exceed the goal. The states with the lowest rates are New Hampshire, 41 percent, and Utah, 38 percent, said FRAC in its annual School Breakfast Scorecard. School breakfast is “the first step to ensuring all children start the day with a healthy meal,” and “have adequate nutrition to learn and thrive and not be distracted by hunger … in the classroom,” said FRAC.
Innovative approaches such as “breakfast in the classroom” or “breakfast after the bell” have boosted participation, said FRAC.
When they use CEP, schools save on administrative costs, such as reviewing applications for free or reduced-price meals, and gain economies of scale in the kitchen. They absorb the expense of students who would have paid for meals and are reimbursed by USDA under a formula that calculates the portion of the student body eligible for free or reduced-price meals. The formula is based on “identified students” who are eligible for free meals for reasons such as their families receive food stamps or welfare benefits.
“In the 2015-16 school year, many states with high rates of school breakfast participation benefitted from wide expansion of the Community Eligibility Provision,” said FRAC. It says 18,000 schools took part in CEP last school year, when the House bill was approved by committee, with an additional 2,700 signed up for this school year.
USDA’s initial figures for the current school year indicate another increase in school breakfast participation. An average 14.7 million students ate breakfast daily through the program, an increase of 160,000 students, with 85 percent of the meals free or reduced-price. That’s the same percentage as the four previous fiscal years.
School breakfast began as a pilot program in 1966 and became permanent in 1975. Like school lunch, meals are available for free to pupils from families with incomes below 130 percent of the poverty level and at a reduced price for those from families with incomes below 185 percent of poverty.