GARTON: A Model for Breakfast in the Classroom Program
You can’t blame Garton 5th graders Phillip Geisler and Khada Baral or their classmates for wondering why so many people showed up this morning to take pictures of them all munching burritos and swigging orange juice and milk. What’s the big deal?
The big deal is that too many kids come to school hungry. They don’t learn as well. They don’t behave as well. Or they may not come at all. Sadly, even in schools with high rates of eligibility for free and reduced price meals, too many kids don’t take advantage of that federally funded program, breakfast in particular. Everyone at school eats lunch but some families think the kids eating breakfast stick out like poor thumbs. Breakfast in the Classroom, a privately funded program new to DMPS this fall, aims to stamp out stigma as well as hunger.
The program reworks how school breakfast is delivered, by offering it to all students at no charge and moving it from the cafeteria to the classroom. No instructional time is lost. Kids eat during those minutes at the beginning of the day devoted to protocols and formalities like office announcements and taking attendance. Probably not incidentally, attendance and tardiness are up and down, respectively, in the participating schools so far.
The local elementary schools besides Garton currently served by the program include: Findley, Edmunds, McKinley, King, Carver, Monroe, Howe, Madison, Cattell, Stowe and South Union. Three middle schools (Hiatt, Hoyt and Weeks) will be added next semester.
DMPS was selected as one of only 10 school districts in the nation selected to participate in this year’s second phase of Breakfast in the Classroom, which is a joint initiative from the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), National Association of Elementary School Principals Foundation, National Education Association Health Information Network and School Nutrition Foundation – collectively known as the Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom. The Partners also are working in conjunction with the Food Bank of Iowa.
Eyang Garrison of FRAC was at Garton this morning. She explained that Des Moines was added to the program this year because of the district’s high free-and-reduced-price meals eligibility (2/3 of kids district-wide) and Iowa’s #49 ranking among the states in a recent year on the index of discrepancy between participation rates in breakfast versus lunch by those eligible. “We believe the evidence shows that adoption of the Breakfast in the Classroom delivery model will lead to increased participation in the federally funded breakfast program,” she said.
The only thing that’s worse than a hungry child is a child who’s hungry when there’s plenty of food to be had.
So to get kids really digging into the feast of food for thought that schools have always dished out, the first course of the day must be breakfast. According to Greg Harris, Executive Director of the Des Moines Education Association, teachers can tell by the kids’ body language that “their minds and bodies are grateful” after Breakfast in the Classroom. Behavioral burps of satisfaction, if you will.
Phillip and Khada would order pancakes and waffles if they could but they gobbled the burritos instead. Good thing, because they both had their favorite classes coming up: math for Khada; PE for Phillip – minds and bodies.
Breakfast in the Classroom is part of a $2 billion cash and in-kind multi-year commitment (through 2015) by Walmart and the Walmart Foundation to fight hunger in America. For more information, visit www.breakfastintheclassroom.org.
This story is part of ”Around the District in 180 Days,” a project by the DMPS Community Relations office to share stories about events, programs and people from each and every school in Des Moines during the 2012-13 school year.
