Low Marks for Breakfast Participation in D.C. Public Schools
School Breakfast Reaching Less than Half of Eligible Low-Income Students

Download Report: "School Breakfast in America's Big Cities"

Washington, D.C. – August 7, 2007 – Despite offering universal breakfast – where all students are offered breakfast for free – less than half (47 percent) of eligible low-income District of Columbia students participated in the School Breakfast Program during the 2005-06 school year, according to a report released by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). This placed the District 13th among the 23 big cities selected for the report.

In Breakfast in America’s Big Cities, FRAC surveyed 23 large school districts, selected on the basis of size and geographic representation. The survey found that nearly half of the urban districts profiled were failing to serve breakfast to a majority of their low-income students. But, schools that adopted strategies to make breakfast part of the school day – such as breakfast in the classroom or to be taken into the classroom from “grab and go” carts from the hallways – were much more effective in reaching children.

While all D.C. Public Schools now offer universal breakfast – where all students can eat breakfast for free, regardless of income – none employ alternate service methods, like breakfast in the classroom, that integrate breakfast into the school day.

“Offering universal breakfast is an important first step in increasing breakfast participation, and the District should be congratulated for taking this step. But, if schools truly want to reap the benefits of providing healthy breakfasts for their students, then they must make breakfast an integral part of the school day,” said Alex Ashbrook, director of D.C. Hunger Solutions. “Over the upcoming school year, we hope to encourage more schools to implement programs like breakfast in the classroom. It’s a solution that works. And, when 35,000 District children are struggling against hunger, we need to do all that we can to connect them with reliable sources of healthy food.”

Ashbrook said that the District Public Schools and the State Education Office (predecessor to what is now the Office of the State Superintendent of Education) had done a good job in expanding and improving breakfast in recent years, but that “it is time to take it to the next level.”

Numerous studies have shown that breakfast improves learning and attendance, lifts test scores, and reduces behavior problems and visits to the school nurse. Beyond the positive impact on learning, breakfast improves children’s diets and helps build healthy habits. Over the past 20 years, obesity rates have doubled among children and tripled among adolescents. Children who start the day with breakfast are less likely to be obese.

“We need to reach more children with breakfast. It’s a magic elixir for schools – it improves children’s learning and behavior, fosters healthy eating habits, reduces school nurse visits, and helps end hunger,” said Jim Weill, FRAC president. “By making it an essential part of the school day, we see that more children participate and have a healthy start to their day.”

The school districts in the survey identified a number of barriers to student participation, many of which could be addressed with more flexible breakfast options. A vast majority of districts found that time was a factor – from students not having enough time in the morning to eat before school, to tight bus schedules that get students to school too late to participate.

Low participation also means that District schools are missing out on the opportunity to access additional federal funding. The school lost $1.27 in federal nutrition funding for every child who would have received a free breakfast every day, and $0.97 for every low-income child who would have received a reduced-price breakfast. FRAC estimated that if the District were able to reach 70 low-income children with breakfast for every 100 that received free and reduced-price lunch, more than 5,740 additional students would have started the day with breakfast and the District would have accessed an additional $1.29 million in federal child nutrition funding.

About the report:
For this report, FRAC surveyed 23 large urban school districts across the country on school breakfast participation rates and policies. FRAC measures the reach of the School Breakfast Program by comparing the number of low-income children that participate in breakfast to those that receive free and reduced-price school lunch. The full report can be accessed at www.frac.org/pdf/urbanbreakfast07.pdf.

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D.C. Hunger Solutions, a project of the Food Research and Action Center, is dedicated to fighting hunger and obesity and improving the nutrition, health and well-being of children, youth and families in the District of Columbia.

The Food Research and Action Center (www.frac.org) is the leading national organization working for more effective public and private policies to eradicate domestic hunger and undernutrition.