Kansas City Public Schools Introduce Breakfast in the Classroom

Kansas City Public Schools recently launched its “Breakfast in the Classroom” program at six schools: Harold Holliday Sr. Montessori School, James Elementary School, Longfellow Elementary School, Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, Trailwoods Elementary School, and Troost Elementary School.

Kansas City Public Schools received $477,742 in grant funding for 25 schools serving 12,500 students to introduce the breakfast service. The expansion is jointly funded by General Mills Foundation and the Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC), a consortium of national education and nutrition organizations including the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), the NEA Foundation, and the School Nutrition Foundation, which is funded by the Walmart Foundation.

The program is designed to serve nutritionally balanced breakfasts that meet the current USDA nutrition standards for the School Breakfast Program (SBP). The BIC program is an in-class model that encourages all students to participate in breakfast. The School Breakfast Program is a federally assisted meal program operating in public and non-profit private schools and residential child care institutions since 1975.

States across the country are requiring schools to make the transition toward non-traditional breakfast service like Breakfast in the Classroom. In fact, 12 states have already enacted legislation that require low-income schools with low breakfast participation to implement non-traditional breakfast service.

According to the Food Research & Action Center’s recently released School Breakfast Scorecard, more than 226,000 low-income children in Missouri participated in the national School Breakfast Program on an average school day in 2017-2018. Operation Food Search notes that 17.4 percent of children in Missouri – nearly one in six children – live in households that struggle with hunger.

On a national basis, 57% of low-income students who participate in the school lunch program also participated in school breakfast. In Missouri, 60.9% of low-income students who receive school lunch also receive school breakfast. 93.6% of Missouri schools that offer lunch also offer breakfast.

Founded in 1981, Operation Food Search (OFS) is a hunger relief organization that provides food and nutrition education. With a strategic focus aimed at ending childhood hunger, OFS empowers families with a range of programs and services proven to reduce food insecurity and increase access to healthy and affordable food. The agency helps feed more than 200,000 individuals on a monthly basis – one-third of which are children – through a network of 330 community partners in 31 Missouri and Illinois counties. Operation Food Search is located at 1644 Lotsie Blvd. For more information, call (314) 726-5355 or visit http://www.OperationFoodSearch.org.