Hungry Children Can’t Learn
17 February 2008Last week Food Bank of Alaska and the Alaska Food Coalition released a new report on school breakfast in Alaska. In conjunction with the release of the study and a request for funding for school breakfasts, the Coalition held a breakfast for legislators at the Capitol Tuesday, February 12.
The Coalition’s report says that 8,500 low-income students do not even have the opportunity to get a breakfast at school. The Legislature is being asked to put aside $1 million as an inducement for breakfast programs, which in turn would leverage federal funds.
Susannah Morgan of the Food Bank noted that the K-12 education budget is around $1 billion. “What we want to do is make sure that that money is well-spent, that those kids are actually learning what we’re putting our money into, that they are learning and getting the best education they can by being nutritionally prepared to learn,” she said.
The executive summary of the report follows:
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Hungry children can’t learn. Every child in Alaska should have access to breakfast at school to make sure they are prepared to learn. A modest state investment in the School Breakfast Program will help ensure that Alaskan schools can provide breakfast to their students.The School Breakfast Program is an efficient and proven way to reduce childhood hunger, promote children’s health, reduce obesity, and improve classroom performance.
Under the School Breakfast Program, the federal government provides reimbursements through the state to schools serving breakfasts that meet federal nutrition guidelines. Unfortunately, the School Breakfast Program is severely underutilized in Alaska. Key findings of this report include:
- Children in Alaska are more likely to face hunger than adults. Fifteen percent of Alaskan children are food insecure.
- Only 34 percent of low-income students in Alaska received a school breakfast during the 2006-07 school year. Alaska ranks 48th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia for participation in the School Breakfast Program.
- Among the 406 public schools in Alaska providing school lunch, 125 do not have a breakfast program.
- 8,589 low-income Alaskan children attend a school with no breakfast program. In total, 30,375 students attend schools without breakfast programs.
- Alaska stands to gain an additional $1.95 million in breakfast funding per year by bringing participation up to 60 percent of low-income students—near the level already achieved by the states with the highest participation.
Why aren’t all Alaska schools participating in the School Breakfast Program? The most important barrier identified by school nutrition officials is economic. Federal breakfast reimbursements are often not enough to cover the significant labor, transportation, and food costs faced by schools. Other challenges include staffing issues, students arriving on busses without enough time to eat breakfast, and inadequate facilities in some rural districts. In addition, students from low-income families living between 130 and 185 percent of the poverty level must contribute a breakfast “co-pay,” which deters participation.
For a modest investment at the state level, the legislature can help many more Alaskan children receive the nutritional and educational benefits of school breakfast and leverage additional federal funds. A state supplement of 50 cents for each breakfast served to a low-income child would help make the School Breakfast Program affordable to more nonparticipating Alaskan schools. Eliminating the breakfast co-pay has been shown to increase participation among students in the reduced-price category.
At current participation levels, the subsidy would cost approximately $1 million and eliminating the co-pay would cost approximately $82,000. Once a School Breakfast Program is established, schools can increase student participation in breakfast by adopting by innovative models of breakfast delivery, such as Breakfast in the Classroom and Grab-and-Go Breakfast. But first the State must invest in our children’s health and education and ensure that every child has breakfast.
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A copy of the full report is available online. For more information visit The Alaska Food Coalition or the Foodbank of Alaska websites. You may also call 907.222.3103, or send email to info@foodbankofalaska.org for additional information.
July 5th, 2008 at 9:34 am
I think students that live in rural areas who rides the schoolbus should report to school at a later time since distance and transportation is an issue and breakfast will be serve at home . increase their food stamps only to those who participate in the program so they will be able to have enough food for breakfast. Make up school hours during summer months or school holidays -half days only for the students in the program.