More than 500 Arkansas public schools -- nearly half of the 1,088 schools in the state -- participate in Breakfast After the Bell programs that provide students with a morning meal as part of the school day.
The programs are Breakfast in the Classroom, Grab & Go Breakfasts and Second Chance Breakfasts. The programs differ in the method of delivery of hot and cold food items to the students, but all have helped increase the number of school breakfasts served to Arkansas students -- particularly to students who are from low-income families, leaders of the state's No Kid Hungry campaign said Monday at the state Capitol.
Arkansas ranks seventh in the nation in its percentage of low-income students choosing to eat school breakfasts, and that percentage is growing, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Monday.
A total of 155,102 children who qualify for free and reduced-price school meals because of low family incomes ate school breakfasts in the 2015-16 school year. That is 63.5 percent of the total 244,295 students from low-income families who ate school lunches and a 2.8 percent increase in free and reduced-price school breakfast-eaters from the previous year, according to Patty Barker, director of the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance's No Kid Hungry campaign.
Hutchinson, who said he recently highlighted the state's school breakfast efforts at the National Governors Association's winter meeting, said the breakfasts benefit the school day.
"What impressed me when I saw Breakfast After the Bell was how quick it was, how efficient and how the students enjoyed it," he said during a news conference Monday in which he proclaimed March to be School Breakfast Month in the state. "There was no stigma attached to it and they cleaned up their own mess. It is certainly an addition to the academic performance in the classroom."
Barker said superintendents, principals and teachers report better student behavior, fewer absences, fewer trips to the school nurse and better grades because of the breakfast programs. And on top of that, she said, there are increases in federal reimbursements to the districts for the money that districts spend on the meals.
The number of breakfasts served annually to Arkansas schoolchildren has increased by 3.6 million since the advent of the No Kid Hungry campaign, from 26.4 million meals in the 2011-12 school year to 30 million in the 2015-16 school year, Barker said. The federal reimbursement for the meals has increased from $41 million to $51.4 million, Barker said, based on data provided by the Arkansas Department of Education.
Becky Head, director of child nutrition services in the Jonesboro School District, said a school in her district started a classroom breakfast program in 2014-15, raising the number of breakfasts served from 180 a day to an average of 640. The district has since instituted After the Bell Breakfast programs at other Jonesboro schools, including the junior highs and high school, Head said.
Jonesboro has also initiated the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Community Eligibility Provision meal program that enables schools with relatively high percentages of students from low-income families to serve school meals at no charge to all of their students.
Jonesboro schools are among nearly 150 schools in 50 Arkansas school districts now participating in the Community Eligibility Provision program, said Cory Biggs, associate director of the Forward Arkansas organization that is working to improve public education.
Head said the expanded school meal programs have benefited not only students but also their local economies because the districts have been able to increase the work hours of their school food service workers, whom she praised.
"At the end of the day in every community where there is a school, we are running the largest restaurant in that community," Head said about school food service programs. "I promise you it is the cleanest restaurant and it is the most nutritious food. In an hour and a half, we get more students through that line than any fast-food restaurant gets through a line in a whole day."
Metro on 03/07/2017