Brain food

Everyone acknowledges the importance of good nutrition for kids, but school breakfast programs have faced an uphill battle in some communities

by Johnette Rodriguez

These kids are fed by a city-sponsored meal program at McGane Pool in South Providence

No matter what your political stripe or philosophical bent, there's something undeniably heart-wrenching about a hungry child. Witness the outpouring of American dollars to relieve famine in West Africa or natural disasters in Central America. Yet what still remains hidden in the United States, a country with a record-busting, booming economy, are its own hungry children.

We no longer see graphic images of hunger in Mississippi, as we did in the '60s, or of homeless people in New York City, as we did in the '80s, but the faces of hunger, especially among our children, are still with us. Look at the vacant eyes of a day-dreamer in third grade, the fidgeting hands and feet of a second-grader. Watch a fourth-grader eat his bag lunch at morning recess and have nothing left for a mid-day meal.

Alert educators have long noticed a correlation between a child's readiness and ability to learn and his or her tendency to eat breakfast before coming to school. As a result, many teachers have kept cereals in desk drawers and juice packs in supply closets. But if the need went unrecognized and a child didn't know how to ask for food, then, more likely than not, the student continued to be hungry.

The link between learning and a good breakfast has now been supported by several studies, including a 1998 Harvard study based on research conducted at Philadelphia and Baltimore schools. Researchers found that kids in school breakfast programs performed significantly better on math tests, improved their behavior, and had better attendance and less tardiness. A1996 study of Central Falls schools by the Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, yielded similar findings: chronic tardiness dropped by 67 percent, the absence rate declined by almost 50 percent; and breakfasts eaten by children in the school program provided more nutrition than those eaten by other kids.

"These statistics are important for school boards," says Lori Marcotte, director of food and nutrition programs at the Tufts Center on Hunger. "If kids are alert during the morning, don't complain of stomach aches, stop fighting with their neighbors, and don't fall asleep, they are better able to learn materials presented to them."

Adds Donna LaVallee, a University of Rhode Island nutritionist, "Without a full stomach, your body can't pay attention to what's going on outside your body, especially if you're a kid who doesn't eat healthy all the time. You're wasting a lot of energy as a teacher teaching these kids."

Recognizing the importance of this problem, the federal school breakfast program provides varying subsidies, through the Rhode Island Department of Education, to local school districts for each child under 18 who participates in a breakfast program, regardless of their family's economic status.

But despite state incentives and intense lobbying by advocates from the George Wiley Center in Pawtucket, Pawtucket, Newport, Warwick, South Kingstown and some other local communities have in recent years been particularly reluctant to introduce a school breakfast program into their school districts. The availability of school breakfasts will increase dramatically this fall, however, thanks to a new state mandate that requires the program at any school where more than 20 percent (down from 40 percent) of the students are eligible for fully or partially subsidized lunches.

"We're kind of knocking down doors," says state Senator J. Clement "Bud" Cicilline (D-Newport), a key sponsor of the legislative mandate. "Where the breakfast program was heavily resisted, we now have feedback that it's working really well. Newport's made money on this thing."

Each of Pawtucket's 16 schools will have school breakfast this fall because of the new state law. In Warwick, the number of schools offering breakfast will increase from two to 12, out of 27 schools. Tiverton and South Kingstown have voluntarily chosen to introduce the program at all of their schools this year. On a statewide basis, the number of schools offering breakfast, compared to last year, is slated to rise from 128 to 191.

Congress created the federal school breakfast program under the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, as part of Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society effort. But although 73 percent of the US schools that offer school lunch also serve breakfast, only 36 percent of the low-income children covered by subsidized school lunches are also participating in breakfast programs, according to a recent report prepared for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). This disparity comes even after a big national push in the '80s to get breakfast programs in place.

This participation gap has fostered skepticism in school districts like Warwick about the new state mandates (even though school figures show that approximately 933 students are eligible to receive subsidized breakfast in the 15 Warwick schools that are still not offering the meal).

Robert Dooley, director of business affairs for the Warwick schools, has seen minimal participation in the two schools that offered breakfast last year. He also anticipates difficulties with bus schedules, schoolyard supervision, and even the purchase and maintenance of equipment.

"It's a philosophical issue," Dooley says. Members of an advisory committee "feel the parents are supposed to get [students] breakfast, and that the schools are being asked to do more and more. There's been no outcry of people saying they want this, no groundswell of interest from the community. If we're going to put dollars into something, we'd rather put it into education."

Some school districts across the country have found there is an initial stigma that kids must overcome in accepting free breakfasts. This reason and others kept the South Kingstown School Committee from instituting a school breakfast program for the past six years.

Committee chairman Scott Mueller remembers voting in favor of the program the first time it came up for a vote, and in two subsequent votes. Each time he was overwhelmingly outvoted, so he didn't even bring it up for discussion in 1998. But with new statistics, new committee members and a strong recommendation from the committee-appointed Diversity Task Force, the issue surfaced again in the spring of '99, and in June, it found enough advocates on the seven-member committee to pass 5-1, with one member absent.

"Hungry kids aren't good learners, [regardless of how] they got to be hungry," notes Mueller, a professor in Rhode Island College's School of Social Work. "If we can ensure that school is a last opportunity for them not to be hungry, we can help them to make the best of what we have to offer in our schools. If we can help them be better learners, this has a lot to do with where they're going to end up in their lives."

Gerralyn Perry, a South Kingstown parent and School Committee member, who was not present at the June vote, is not convinced. "We live in a vibrant community of concerned and educated families, and kids who are hungry are discreetly given breakfast," she says, referring to how some teachers pass cereal and juice to kids who seem to need the sustenance.

"I think the schools mean well," says Perry, "but they are stepping into areas where it's the family's responsibility. Parents need to be told that it's their job to feed their children, not the schools' -- not in South Kingstown. Other areas of the state have more poor children."

But John Glasheen, director of South County Community Action, sees a strong need for the breakfast program in town. "In general, people in South Kingstown don't know that 10 to 14 percent of the population is below the poverty line, with not enough to pay the bills and buy food for breakfast," he says. It's also the case, Glasheen says, that "you have to know the code as to what to do if you're hungry -- kids who have difficulty in school don't know the code."

It's not just poor kids who need breakfast in our society of working single and married parents rushing to get their kids off to school in the morning. Lori Marcotte of the Tufts Center on Hunger points to other factors that contribute to students getting to school hungry: oversleeping; morning activities, such as hockey or band; early bus schedules that keep kids on the bus for an hour; and adolescents skipping breakfast in a wrong-headed pursuit of body image.

"It takes a half-hour for the brain to register that it's hungry," Marcotte says. "Many kids are not hungry when they first get up, but then they don't have enough nutrients to stay awake and alert during the morning."

And then there are the kids whose parents simply run out of food money toward the end of the month. On July 14, the USDA released a long-awaited report on the ability of Americans to provide food for their families, covering the period from 1995 to 1998. In 1998, 10.5 million households were food insecure, meaning they could not meet their basic food needs at all times. These households included 14 million children -- 20 percent of all the children in the US.

Even more disturbing figures show that food security improved from 1995 to 1997, but worsened in 1998. The Tufts Center suggests looking at the impact of recent welfare and food stamp cuts on families, as well as the difficulties for low-wage workers in making ends meet. Indeed, a 1998 report from Second Harvest, a huge national food program network that encompasses 46,295 agencies and serves close to 26 million people a year, described the kind of families currently seeking emergency food supplies: over half are from non-urban areas; more than one-third are children; 28 percent cite employment as the primary source of income, yet 45 percent have too little job income to meet their food needs. Working a minimum wage job, a person typically makes just under $12,000 a year; It's no coincidence that almost 80 percent of the four-person households served by food banks have an income of less than $15,500.

In Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Community Food Bank estimates that one in four children under 18 are threatened by hunger, and 43 percent of recipients of emergency food from the food bank are children. And the Rhode Island Public Expenditures Council recently reported that one out of every three Rhode Island public school children lives at or near the poverty line.

Two questions in the Second Harvest report are particularly thought-provoking: "How many adults miss meals?" and "How many children miss meals?" Of the respondents, 28 percent reported that adults in their households had missed meals, and only 9 percent of the households with children indicated that children missed meals. It's understandable that most adults would skip meals before allowing their children to go hungry, but it's hard to know how many adults would be too ashamed to admit that a child in their care went hungry.

What if a school district initiates school breakfasts and then has a difficult time getting students to take part? Two things have proved very effective in increasing participation: offering free breakfasts to all students and promotion campaigns that include nutrition education.

In Central Falls, a coalition of groups called Kids First, which was organized by Hasbro in 1992, set out to ensure that all local children had adequate nutrition to learn and be productive. To maximize participation in school breakfasts, Kids First launched several nutrition education and incentive programs, such as prizes on Lucky Milk Day (a number on the bottom of the milk carton), games with the USDA food pyramid and special days when local officials, sports figures, parents or teachers were invited to breakfast. An average daily increase in participation of 83 percent was so impressive that the Central Falls school breakfast program received two USDA awards and, in 1995, was featured on ABC's Nightline.

Kids First then went statewide with school breakfast promotions in Woonsocket, North Kingstown, Westerly and Pawtucket, as well as nutrition programs for the summer meals program in parks and playgrounds. The coalition provides all of their services and materials free to any school district or community who asks for their help.

"It really does take the whole community reinforcing the message that breakfast is important," says Blair Kinger, program coordinator of Kids First. "There are a lot of barriers. You have to make it a happy place. There was a lot of resistance to school lunches at first. It's going to take a little time."

It might also take the elimination of another barrier by offering universally free breakfasts. Although federal guidelines require non-discriminatory treatment of students -- and the schools usually have parents pay ahead for those students who are not completely subsidized -- the kids often figure out the distinctions. Those who can afford the breakfast may perceive that it's only for poor kids, and the poor kids themselves may become too embarrassed to participate. In Central Falls, the Tufts Center on Hunger studied a demonstration project in 1995, and found that participation increased by 60 percent in those schools where breakfast was free to everyone. More significantly, it increased by 71 percent for children from poor families.

Perhaps the school breakfast issue is best summed up by Senator Cicilline: "We do know that good nutrition does influence a child's ability to learn. Let's do everything we can to help them keep up, because when they get behind, they let go, they get in trouble, they drop out, they get low-paying jobs, they might get in more trouble. We don't want that for our kids."