Posted Sept 23, 2010
During morning announcements, carts stocked with hot and cold breakfast items are lined up outside the classrooms at Hawkins Mill Elementary.
Choosing between a vitamin-enriched doughnut or a sausage bagel, students at the Frayser school bring their morning meal back to their desks, chatting between mouthfuls.
By moving the morning meal from the cafeteria to the classrooms, Hawkins Mill has transformed the most important meal of the day. Although breakfasts are available in most school cafeterias, not all students arrive at school early enough, or miss the morning meal for other reasons.
And then there’s the juice issue, of course.
“I don’t like eating breakfast at home because there’s no orange juice,” said second-grader Briana Curry, taking a gargantuan bite of her warm bagel Monday morning.
By the time the teacher finishes taking attendance, Briana and her fellow students have swept their napkins and juice containers into the trash.
A grant from the Got Breakfast? Foundation, whose mission is to provide breakfast for every child, has helped jump-start participation in the school’s breakfast program from 50 to 80 percent.
A survey sponsored by Gallup and released in March ranked Memphis tops in the nation for hunger.
In Memphis City Schools, nearly 80 percent of the district’s 105,000-student population qualifies for free and reduced-price meals, an indicator often used to gauge poverty levels.
Thirty-six percent of Shelby County Schools’ 47,000 students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, showing a significant jump from 15,900 to 18,000 students since 2008.
“It’s due to the economy,” said director of nutrition for county schools Marsha Landstreet, who is seeing an increase in free and reduced-rate meals, particularly in the Collierville area.
Yet getting breakfast to the area’s neediest children has long been a struggle.
Across city schools, some 35 percent of students take advantage of the free morning meal.
When served before school, breakfast, for a variety of reasons, is skipped by the majority of students.
“They were missing it and they weren’t eating at home,” said Hawkins Mill principal Melanie Nelson.
Her teachers now report that students are beginning their school day more energized.
And with full stomachs and time to socialize over breakfast, the teachers are seeing better behavior as well, she said.
Multiple studies have shown that children who eat breakfast have higher test scores, lower rates of school absences, and are less hyperactive than children who skip breakfast.
“A hungry child can’t learn,” said city schools director of nutritional services Vista Fletcher.
Breakfast in the classroom is also catching on at Oak Forest Elementary, Balmoral Ridgeway Elementary, and Oakhaven Middle schools.
“We hope that the program will continue to grow,” Fletcher said.
The county schools system ran a breakfast-in-the-classroom program for years at Millington East Elementary before the school closed.
Although it was successful, it demanded a number of logistic adjustments, including wrapping meals to go and garbage removal, which many other principals aren’t ready to take on, Landstreet said.
For Nelson, however, the benefits outrank the fear of spilled milk.
“Once, (if) you missed breakfast, you just didn’t eat,” she said, “Now, even late kids still get breakfast.”
— Lindsay Melvin: 529-2445
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Copyright © 2010, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.
