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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

“Insane” NYC School Breakfast Policy Hurting Statewide Progress - Advocate

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Tuesday, January 15, 2013   

NEW YORK - Nutrition advocates are hailing a new report from the Food Research and Action Center, which finds that this school year for the first time more than half of all low-income pupils nationwide who participated in school lunch programs also participated in school breakfasts. That's a positive step and a boon to learning, say advocates.

New York State's progress, though, is being hurt by resistance from the New York City school system. In Syracuse, 63 percent of low-income children ate a free breakfast for every 100 who also ate lunch, but in New York City, the ratio was only 35 percent. The Bloomberg administration has stated it opposes mandating in-classroom breakfasts citywide because of fears it will increase obesity.

Joel Berg of the New York Coalition Against Hunger calls that policy "unconscionable."

"It's absolutely insane for New York City not to be accessing these federally-funded meals that are so critical to children's educational performance."

On the positive side, the school district in Brentwood, on Long Island, which is among the lowest in the nation in terms of school breakfast participation, registered the largest percentage increase from last year to this year - a recognition that, as Berg puts it, "To be schooled you must be fueled, and to be well-read you must be well-fed."

In Albany, Linda Bopp of Hunger Solutions New York says studies show school breakfasts work against obesity and foster learning. She says kids in Syracuse middle schools can take a "grab and go" breakfast into classrooms while younger children find the first meal of the day already there.

"They have instituted a plan within their elementary schools where all children have breakfast in their classroom at the start of their school day."

Crystal FitzSimons of FRAC says most successful school breakfast programs have learned how to take them out of the cafeteria so pupils don't have to show up much earlier to school just to eat breakfast.

"We call that breakfast in the classroom, or 'grab-and-go' breakfast. And so, the kids are able to eat with their classmates; they eat while the teacher is taking attendance or doing the first morning lesson. And they're able to start the school day ready to learn, because they've had a healthy breakfast."

Linda Bopp sees hope that the school breakfast issue will be addressed statewide.

"We are very excited that Governor Cuomo just announced in his State of the State address that he will be creating a statewide anti-hunger task force."

The FRAC report says that if New York reached a goal of 70 out of 100 kids getting free breakfasts for every 100 receiving school lunch, the state would gain more than $79 million in additional federal funding.




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