Each month, our staff reads hundreds of media reports on the subject of school nutrition. We curate our favorites in a monthly blog post we call, “In the News.” Highlighting positive stories about the great things going on in school cafeterias helps us in many ways: providing inspiration, connecting school nutrition professionals from across the country, and promoting those programs and individuals who are taking the extra step to make their school nutrition program the very best it can be.
Wow, can you believe it’s already May?! The school year will be wrapping up for most of us over the course of the next couple of months, which means 2015 is halfway over! Where did the time go?
Here at Beyond Breakfast, April 2015 kept us pretty busy. First we sat down with SNF Director of Development Janet Hedrick to talk about the three pillars of the School Nutrition Foundation mission: Education, Research, and Scholarship. Then we celebrated National Garden Month with a roundup of some of our favorite school garden stories and resources.
April also saw the launch of our Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom Resources Roundup series. We’ll be taking some of our favorite breakfast-in-the-classroom and school breakfast resources and presenting them here to help you incorporate them into your breakfast-in-the-classroom action plan.
Of course the big story came just on April’s heels—National School Lunch Hero Day! Celebrated on Friday, May 1, National School Lunch Hero Day is an opportunity to say thank you to the school nutrition professionals in your community for all the hard work and care they provide to students. Food is love! Now, let’s take a look at some of our favorite headlines from April 2015
Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom Award
Last month we were thrilled to announce that Gadsden Elementary School District in Arizona has been awarded a $126,000 grant from Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom! More than five thousand elementary and junior high students will now have access to breakfast in San Luis, AZ. Keep checking back with us here at Beyond Breakfast for an inside look as breakfast-in-the-classroom comes to Gadsden!
Community Eligibility Provision
Everywhere we looked this month the Community Eligibility Provision dominated school nutrition headlines. As more schools implement universal lunch and breakfast, cafeterias are seeing participation rates shoot sky-high, while teachers report students who are more ready to learn, and exhibiting fewer behavior problems.
Alternate Models Deliver Breakfast-in-the-Classroom Success
In Washington state lawmakers are considering a Breakfast After the Bell bill that would require all schools with a 70 percent or higher free/reduced rate to offer breakfast. The program is currently being piloted in the Highline School District where prior to the pilot only about 30 percent of students at Midway Elementary School were eating breakfast—now they are serving 80-90 percent of the students daily.