Broadened provision may bring free breakfasts, lunches for Iowa students

With the start of school nearing, another year of packing lunches looms for parents and students.

But this year, a program change has the potential to allow more families to leave providing lunch — as well as breakfast — to their children's schools at no cost.

The 2014-15 school year will be the first for an expansion to Iowa of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Community Eligibility Provision, which aids schools with high populations of students from low-income families to provide free meals to all.

Free and reduced-price meals already are available to students from low-income households, but the provision offers no-cost breakfasts and lunches to all children at a school regardless of family income.

'I'm excited,' said Ann Feilmann, chief of the bureau of nutrition and health services for the Iowa Department of Education, about the provision. 'Getting kids healthy meals and more kids healthy meals is a positive.'

The provision provides full reimbursement for all meals as long as at least 40 percent of building students qualify for free or reduced-price meals based on something other than income applications. In addition, all buildings using the provision must serve breakfast.

This provision allows districts to be reimbursed at a higher rate.

Tate High School in the Iowa City Community School District will have free meals through the provision.

'I anticipate that we'll have greater numbers of (students eating) breakfast,' said Alison Demory, food service director for the Iowa City schools. 'In the upper grades, they're probably not as focused on breakfast for lots of different reasons.

'I'm optimistic when they know it's free, we'll get the participation at Tate.'

Slow gains

According to a January Food Resource and Action Center (FRAC) report, Iowa ranked 47th in the nation for the ratio of low-income students participating in the School Breakfast Program in comparison to those taking advantage of the National School Lunch Program.

For every 100 low-income Iowa children eating school lunch during the 2012-13 school year — the most recent year for which complete data is available — only 40.5 got breakfast at school. According to the report, Iowa's average daily participation in the breakfast program in 2012-13 was 93,441 students, and the ratio of School Breakfast Program buildings to National School Lunch Program buildings is 92.2 to 100.

Those statistics actually represent an improvement for Iowa, which ranked 48th with a ratio of 39 to 100 based on 2011-12 data, Feilmann said. Between then and 2012-13, low-income students' participation in the programs grew by 3,117 for breakfast and 1,185 for lunch.

'We'll take that as a good sign we're making some progress,' Feilmann said. 'Not as much (progress) as we want to make. We continue to work toward that.'

Delivery

The report shows that Washington, D.C., ranked first in the nation with a ratio of 70 to 100, and the national ratio is 51.9 to 100, an increase from the previous year's ratio of 50.4 to 100.

'I think you can attribute that to more schools implementing breakfast in the classroom or grab-and-go breakfast,' said Crystal Fitzsimons, FRAC's director of school and out-of-school time programs, about the national uptick. 'Iowa is definitely moving in the right direction because they had an increase but could still expand the program significantly.'

She's a proponent of both of those delivery models, which include having breakfast foods available in the hallway or at the front door for students to eat on their way to class or actually serving breakfast in the classroom during the first part of the school day.

'The idea is to make it easier and more accessible to kids,' Fitzsimons said. 'School breakfast really can help improve student achievement and health.'

Breakfast program participation lags in comparison to lunch, and Fitzsimons noted that's due to obstacles such as getting children to buildings in time to eat breakfast, which some schools serve before instructional time begins. School lunch has more of a 'captive audience,' thus making it easier to reach students in contrast to breakfast, she said.

'If it's in the cafeteria before school starts, it's seen as a program only for low-income kids, and children start opting out of the program as they get older,' she said.

Sandy Huisman, director of food nutrition managers for the Des Moines Public Schools, said participation in the breakfast program had been lagging. But in the past few years, through partnerships and grants including work with FRAC, administrators have reversed that trend.

Beginning in 2012-13, the district offered free breakfast in the classroom for all students at 12 Des Moines elementary schools and three middle schools.

The district even took gold in its division in the Iowa School Breakfast Challenge, sponsored by the department of education and the Midwest Dairy Council, for boosting breakfast participation by 32 percent.

Huisman said the district plans to expand those models to seven more schools during the upcoming school year while a total of 35 buildings will have free meals through the Community Eligibility Provision.

Other models

Iowa City has offered free universal breakfast at Grant Wood Elementary School for years, Demory said, and that service will expand to Twain, Kirkwood and Hills elementary schools beginning this fall. Breakfast is available at all Iowa City district schools but it is served in the cafeteria, before instructional time.

'The concern has been when you put food in the classrooms, that brings a whole lot of other problems, with sanitation, pests, cleaning. It may take time away from academics,' Demory said.

'When we serve food in the cafeteria, we know the food is distributed in a sanitary way. We clean it up and we can store it safely.'

The application process still is open, so Feilmann said she isn't sure which districts will be taking advantage of the provision in 2014-15.

'Until we get their other applications submitted, we can say we've had conversations with a number of districts across the state,' she said.

Even if a school can't use the provision, Feilmann said she supports making strides to increase access to breakfast.

'Students who don't tend to eat breakfast don't make up those nutrients the rest of the day,' she said. 'Being well nourished contributes to having healthier students and contributes to them being at school more frequently and they're learning more.'