In an annual report on school-breakfast outreach, the anti-hunger Food Research and Action Center said West Virginia did the best job in the country in reaching low-income children, and Utah did the worst.
The “School Breakfast Scorecard” compares participation in the breakfast program with the school lunch tally. “Lunch is a good benchmark of the eligible population,” says FRAC. Across the country, for every 100 children served a free or reduced-price lunch, an average of 54.3 low-income children eat school breakfast. West Virginia had the highest ratio, 82 percent, and New Mexico was second highest at 71 percent. FRAC’s goal is a 70-percent ratio. Utah had the lowest ratio, 35 percent, followed by New Hampshire at 39 percent.
FRAC said school-breakfast participation by low-income children increased in 44 states during the 2014-15 school year, an increase of 475,000 children nationwide. In a companion report on successful school-breakfast programs, FRAC said top-performing school districts used approaches such as breakfast in the classroom and free breakfast for all to “overcome common barriers to participation, including financial constraints, inconvenience and social stigma.”
Participants in the school-breakfast program are overwhelmingly from low-income households, according to USDA data — 85 percent during 2014-15, or roughly 12 million of the 14 million children who ate school breakfast on an average school day. Since the 2008-09 recession, school-lunch participation has come increasingly from low-income families. A record 73 percent of lunches were served for free or at reduced price last school year, compared to 59 percent in 2006-07.