Hawaiʻi drops to 47th in the nation in school breakfast participation
Appleseed announces Hawaiʻi School Breakfast Challenge to boost participation rates.
HONOLULU, Hawaiʻi — While most school breakfast participation rates rose across the nation last year, Hawaiʻi’s rate decreased. This lead our state’s ranking to drop to 47th in the nation as measured by the annual “School Breakfast Scorecard,” released yesterday by the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC).
The scorecard ranks states based on the participation of low-income children in the federal School Breakfast Program, which it measures by comparing the number of low-income children who eat school breakfast with those who get school lunch.
Statewide, on an average day during the 2015-16 school year, 28,733 keiki eligible for free or reduced-price school meals participated in school breakfast—a decrease of 3.1 percent from the prior year, or more than 900 low-income keiki. In contrast, national participation increased by 3.7 percent.
In other words, on an average school day, only 43 low-income children in Hawaiʻi participated in the School Breakfast Program for every 100 participating in the National School Lunch Program. The top-ranked states in the scorecard, West Virginia and New Mexico, reached 84 and 73 low-income students with school breakfast for every 100 who received school lunch, respectively.
If Hawai‘i were to improve its participation rate to 70 eligible kids eating school breakfast per 100 getting school lunch, that would mean 18,000 more low-income students starting their day with school breakfast. It would also mean that the state would bring in an additional $4.6 million per year in federal funds.
“School breakfast has proven anti-hunger, academic, and health benefits, so it is a wasted opportunity when so many of our low-income keiki are not participating in the program,” said Nicole Woo, Senior Policy Analyst at Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice. “In addition, we are leaving millions of federal dollars on the table each year. Those dollars, which come to the state in the form of school breakfast reimbursements, can help shore up school cafeterias’ finances as well as help local families make ends meet.”
In order to try to improve our state’s ranking, Hawaiʻi Appleseed is challenging Hawaiʻi schools to increase their school breakfast participation numbers, especially among low-income students, during the 2017 spring semester.
The Hawaiʻi School Breakfast Challenge is offering technical support and small grants to schools that apply for and are chosen to participate in the challenge. These grants are meant to help schools make improvements in how they serve breakfast as well as get the word out to students and their parents. At the end of the year, awards will be presented to the schools that show the most progress.
During the Hawaiʻi School Breakfast Challenge, Hawaiʻi Appleseed will work with selected schools to assist them in implementing best practice meal service models, especially those that have already been proven to increase breakfast participation in other states.
