Participation in the School Breakfast Program on the Increase

[Chef Dave]

Here's an alarming statistic. Last year, 8.1 million low income children participated in the national School Breakfast program. This is a 5% increase of 391,000 children compared to the previous school year.

According to research conducted by Rachel Cooper and Madeleine Levin on behalf of the Food Research and Action Center in Washington D.C., daily participation in the school breakfast program has increased by 14.2% during the last 3 years.

[3rdgradeteach]

That is strange since I just asked my kids last week if they had eaten breakfast.

[bella mundi]

My whole school gets free breakfast no matter what. I have no idea why, since a lot of people in my school come from more affluent neighborhoods. It's a pretty even mix, actually. But all the kids get free breakfast and lunch.

Although, the breakfasts they serve are abominable! I don't even like to look at most of them, much less eat them!! Lunches are slightly better.

For example, who is the genius who came up with mozzarella sticks for breakfast???? AND, they will also serve them for lunch also. <shudder> I could go on and on . . .

[3rdgradeteach]

Wow....that's unheard of......wish I had that when I was a kid....(not the mozzarella sticks, but)...I was allowed to buy lunch only twice a week....these kids are lucky in the sense that they never have to worry about carrying a lunch..

[mopar]

A lot of times, if your school has over 50% free and reduced lunch students, they provide breakfast for all of the students regardless. Otherwise, only free and reduced lunch students receive breakfast for free. Everyone else pays for it.

I love that students can receive breakfast. I just remember having to keep a constant supply of poptarts just in case.

[titansrst]

It's a sad state we're in, but I witness too many children calling potato chips and some watered-down, colorful sweet drink breakfast. I, too, keep lots of cereal around, because even with school breakfast program, many ofmy kids come late to school and would otherwise not eat. Parents are something else.

[Chef Dave]

When school resumes, I'm going to talk to our building administrator about the breakfast program.

My high school doesn't have one. We have a lunch program but no breakfast program.

Our school cafeteria is very limited. They share some of our refrigeration and lack any hot holding or heating equipment. This is because all meals served in our district are made at the middle school and transported to the other schools.

With this being said, I don't understand why we don't have one cafeteria worker over here in the morning dispensing something as simple as boxes of cereal and cartons of milk.

My student operated restaurant serves breakfast but this is a paid service and we do not receive funding or supplies for a free breakfast program.

Then again - we're extremely short staffed in the morning. My 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th period classes may be used to make lunch ... but I have no students available to prepare or even sell breakfast.

The responsibility for making breakfast falls on my shoulders and the responsibility for selling it is my assistant manager's responsibility.

[javamomma]

I am in elementary school and we have about 50% of our students eat breakfast at school. Breakfast is decent, some days are a lot better than others. Cereal is always an option along with a hot choice.

[mopar]

Chef Dave,

You may want to look into starting a breakfast club. Inviting students to come in early for a zero hour or school activity to make breakfast and sell it. Might help to increase your numbers.
The state might provide some funding towards breakfast for certain students. Some states allow you to buy whatever you want to give to the students as long as you stay within their 50cent per student or whatever the amount is.

[Chef Dave]

Chef Dave,

You may want to look into starting a breakfast club. Inviting students to come in early for a zero hour or school activity to make breakfast and sell it. Might help to increase your numbers.
The state might provide some funding towards breakfast for certain students. Some states allow you to buy whatever you want to give to the students as long as you stay within their 50cent per student or whatever the amount is.

This is an interesting thought but is probably not practical due to a number of reasons. My aide doesn't come in until 8 AM which is fifteen minutes after 1st period begins. The clerk from the district office doesn't arrive with money until 8:30 ... so I wouldn't have any money for the cash registers. (For security purposes, we keep no money on the premises after school ends).

State funding for breakfast would be interesting ... but would result in more oversight ... which I don't necessarily want.

Having students help me make breakfast would be challenging insofar as these would not be culinary arts students. Insofar as our kitchen is commercially licensed, we are required to abide by the county health code ... and these kids would be unfamiliar with the code.

Before the program could even start, we'd have to have a crash course on hygiene and safe food handling procedures.

It takes 30 minutes to an hour to make breakfast depending upon whether we're making it from scratch or we're using pre-cooked frozen products.

Finally - although I make breakfast on a daily basis, I have evolved a system for doing this in a time efficient manner. After knocking off breakfast I use the remaining time to prep for classes. If I had students in the kitchen, I wouldn't be able to prep because I'd have to supervise the students.