Approximately 2 million children are not being reached through the federally-funded School Breakfast Program, according to an annual report issued by the nonprofit Washington-based Food Research and Action Center (FRAC).
The average number of children served daily through the breakfast program rose to a record 6.3 million in 2000, almost double the number served in 1990, according to "The School Breakfast Scorecard: 2000" report.
A record 71,000 schools nationwide also served breakfast under the USDA program, but "underperformance" by other schools left an estimated $320 million in unspent federal aid, the Washington Post reports.
"Local school districts often don’t make an effort or don’t know how to let their local community know that these programs are available," Lynn Parker, FRAC’s director of child nutrition programs and a report co-author, told the Post.
The report measures a state's effectiveness by comparing the number of schools that offer breakfast programs with the number of schools that participate in the larger subsidized-lunch program.
Nearly 75 percent of the 94,695 schools nationwide that offered school lunch in the 1999-2000 year also offered breakfast. Of that total, an average of 42 percent of children in the subsidized-lunch program also took part in the breakfast program.
Arkansas, Kentucky, and West Virginia were the top-performing states, averaging 55-percent participation in the school breakfast program by subsidized-lunch students.
California and New York had the largest total numbers of students not getting breakfast every day -- 292,000 and 229,000 children, respectively -- with Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Alaska having the lowest percentages of participating students. Those three states averaged just 25 percent of eligible students eating breakfast.
On the whole, state agencies are getting better in expanding the breakfast program, and the USDA has issued new guidelines reducing the paperwork required by participating families.
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