EDITORIAL: Feeding Central Texas children
A classroom breakfast program now being tested in the Waco and Connally independent school districts should help more area youth start off the day right.
The Breakfast in the Classroom initiative is being tried at South Waco, North Waco, Dean Highland and Crestview elementaries, as well as Connally’s primary and elementary campuses — typically low-income campuses where few students arrive for class well-fed.
The program is backed by the Texas Hunger initiative and Baylor University’s School of Social Work, which have been working to recruit districts to participate in this federally funded program.
Ten school districts statewide have signed up. All have populations in which at least 70 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and have had low participation in breakfast programs.
This new program feeds all students in their classrooms. Schools are reimbursed on a sliding scale for all students, depending on whether a child qualifies for free or reduced-price meals.
Recent reports show far too many youth are food insecure, or underfed, in our society. The U.S. Department of Agriculture this month reported that 1 in 5 Texas households, or 1.7 million people, were food insecure from 2008 to 2010 — that’s 18 percent of our state’s population. Texas ranks second in the nation for the highest percentage of food-insecure households and is tied for third for households experiencing very low food security.
These meals might help reverse that hunger trend. Keeping stomachs filled should keep young minds more focused and, we hope, intellectually nourished.
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