GOALS FOR TEXAS The Food Research & Action Center set a goal for states to reach 60 students eating free and reducedprice breakfast for each 100 students participating in free and reduced-price lunch. In the 20112012 school year, Texas had 59.6% students participate in FRP breakfast for every 100 students that participated in FRP lunch. In order to reach the goal of 60% of students participating in FRP breakfast in Texas, the state needs to serve breakfast to an additional 8,688 students per day. When Texas reaches 60% statewide participation in FRP breakfast, the state will receive an additional $2,152,341 in federal reimbursement. Since the 2009-2010 school year, Texas has increased FRP breakfast participation by 73,688 students per day, adding $18,460,953 in federal reimbursement. Due to districts with extremely high participation rates in FRP breakfast, Texas has a high statewide participation rate across the board. Unfortunately, many of the school districts that have high participation rates are smaller districts, while many districts fall below 60% participation, including several larger districts. In order to ensure that every student that needs a meal is eating breakfast, Texas needs to not only have a statewide breakfast participation of 60%, but also a district-wide participation of 60%. If every school district in Texas reached this goal of serving FRP breakfast to 60% of students eating FRP lunch, the state would receive $46,672,962 in additional reimbursement. This would serve FRP breakfast to an additional 186,558 low-income students each day. For example, Figure 1 shows the largest amounts of additional federal funding that school districts would receive if they reached a 60% FRP participation in the SBP. Texas’ success in increasing participation in the School Breakfast Program over the past few years has largely been due to the implementation of alternative service models in schools. Schools with a high percentage of FRP eligible students are encouraged to explore the use of one of these alternative models for serving breakfast. Serving universal breakfast is another way to increase participation; it has been proven cost effective as well.43 Everyone in the district can be involved in increasing breakfast participation in their schools. The next section outlines some ways that each member of the district can help.
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Children are our most valuable resource.
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-Herbert Hoover
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