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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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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.

Three Rs and a B: Reading, Writing, 'Rithmetic and Breakfast

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Monday, April 8, 2013   

DENVER - Breakfast will become part of the curriculum at many Colorado schools if the Breakfast After the Bell Bill (HB1006) passes through the state Legislature.

Every day, thousands of Colorado kids arrive at school on empty stomachs. The Breakfast After the Bell Nutrition Program would require many schools to offer a nutritious breakfast after the start of the school day.

According to pediatrician Dr. Sarah VanScoy in Aurora, skipping breakfast affects a pupil's performance and health.

"Kids have a harder time concentrating," she said. "The other thing is, school nurse visits are up. A lot of time kids will have headaches, stomach aches."

If the bill passes, schools with 80 percent or more pupils who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch will be required to offer breakfast by the 2014-15 school year. Studies have shown that children who eat breakfast have 17 percent higher math scores and are 20 percent more likely to graduate from high school.

Alish Lynch is a high school junior in Denver. As a teenage girl, she said, it's sometimes hard to make time for breakfast in the morning, but when she was younger, her family had a tough time affording food for breakfast for a brief period.

"When I was in that situation when I was in seventh grade, I didn't tell any of my peers just because that negative social stigma attached to it, and you don't really, when you're younger, want to reveal that to your peers."

Many schools that offer breakfast serve it in a "to go" form. Lynch's school even offers smoothies to make it more convenient.

Dr. VanScoy said skipping breakfast actually has a physiological effect on the body.

"With little kids, they have a smaller liver," she pointed out. "Our liver is where we store energy, so if you've fasted overnight and you don't replenish those stores with breakfast, you don't have the energy, so you're lethargic, you're irritable, you don't concentrate."

According to Hunger Free Colorado, 22 percent of all children in Colorado are living in food-insecure households. That number has increased by 86 percent since 2002.



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