Delaware schools offer breakfast to all students

Pinched faces. Pursed lips. Crinkled brows.

Terry Carson, principal at Seaford High School in southern Delaware, knows what hunger looks like. 

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All students, regardless of their socioeconomic status, will have access to free breakfasts in the district again this year, she said. Several other Delaware schools also will serve breakfast to all students.

"As the principal of Seaford High School, I feel like giving kids breakfast in the morning when they come into school is one of the most important things we do," Carson said. 

"If you start your day hungry, how do you focus?" 

The Food Bank of Delaware this summer released a report on school breakfasts in the First State. 

In 2016, it teamed up with the Delaware State Education Association to support legislation that would ensure all students had access to a nutritional meal at the start of their day. 

The bill, signed by then-Gov. Jack Markell, requires schools part of a federal program that gives free meals to students in high-poverty areas to make breakfast available until the beginning of second period, serve it in classrooms or allow students to grab their meals from easily accessible carts. 

That way, even if students get to school late, they can still eat breakfast. 

The new law went into effect last fall, according to the Food Bank. Since then, several schools have greatly increased the number of students they feed each morning, though there is still room for improvement and at least three school districts have not implemented alternative models like grab-and-go carts shown to increase the number of kids that eat breakfast. 

Altogether, Delaware schools fed a combined 51,368 students 8,335,481 breakfasts in 2016-17, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers school lunch and breakfast programs. 

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"The fact of the matter remains that children that are well fed are better performers," said Patricia Beebe, president and CEO of the Food Bank.

The data backs that up. Students who regularly start the day with a healthy breakfast have a 17.5 percent average increase in standardized math scores and are in school 1.5 more days on average, according to No Kid Hungry. According to the National Institutes of Health, undernourished children don't learn as fast or as well as nourished children and are more likely to have cognitive defects and poor physical development. 

Hungry students also tend to be crankier. 

Carson, in Seaford, said she's seen a marked change since the school implemented a new breakfast strategy.

For the longtime educator, Seaford High School's breakfast is truly a labor of love.
She is an active participant in the program and, with the help of Associate Principals Kelly Cannon and Clarence Giles, hand-delivers breakfast to each of the school's classrooms each and every morning. 

"We grab carts every morning and drop the breakfast off," she said. "It's really good for us because we can tell the climate of the school right away in the morning." 

She said it also shows students and staff that she, Cannon and Giles are invested in the school and want children to succeed. They greet students with smiles and hugs and talk to them if they appear to be in a bad mood. 

"You've had breakfast, someone's smiled at you, someone's cared for you, someone's talked to you," she said. 

Carson also sets aside lunches for tardy students and makes sure they eat before they go to class. It gives students, some of whom may come from chaotic households, the chance to regroup, she said. 

"I'm very protective," Carson said. "If someone, I don't care who it is, tries to schedule a meeting with me during breakfast time, my secretary, she knows breakfast time is sacred around here." 

It makes some people raise eyebrows, perhaps because they assume high schoolers are capable of getting breakfast and feeding themselves. 

"But you can't feed yourself if there's no food available," Carson said. "The other concern I have with high school students is — we serve a very nutritious breakfast, there's fruit, there's a carb, there's protein, it's a very balanced breakfast — some of the older kids, especially because grown-ups aren't paying attention to them because grown-ups think they can take care of themselves, they aren't making good choices." 

Seaford is not the only school to take a creative approach to school breakfast. 

At the Colonial School District, grab-and-go kiosks are set up in main corridors so students can quickly grab breakfast on their way to class in the morning. They eat it during morning announcements or while finishing up homework. 

"Four or five years ago we converted to grab-and-go breakfast services," Supervisor of Nutrition Services Paula Angelucci said. "We offer hot and cold (food) on our kiosks. We offer a variety of milk. We offer a variety of fruit." 

The meals are free to all students, and since introducing the kiosks, the district has gone from serving 200-250 breakfasts a day to 700-800. 

That's still less than the number of lunches served: 1,200. 

Angelucci said teachers and staff at the district's school have noticed a difference in kids since expanding the breakfast program. 

"If tummies are full, their behavior is better," she said. "Less go to the nurse complaining of headaches or tummy aches." 

Even kindergarteners quickly fall into the routine of picking up breakfast, she said. For children that may not have consistent access to food at home or during the summer, that first breakfast on the first day of school can help them start the year out right. 

"It's really cute," Angelucci said. "Especially the younger ones are adorable." 

Contact Jessica Bies at (302) 324-2881 or jbies@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @jessicajbies.

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