Preventing childhood hunger in a poor school district

Universal breakfast in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS)
For the 2006-07 school year MPS offered all schools the chance to participate in a universal breakfast program, provided that they collect 95 percent of their meal applications, serve breakfast in the classroom and agree to participate in research . Under the concept of universal breakfast, all students, regardless of their families’ income, are eligible for breakfast at school. The program, however, is most advantageous for schools with high numbers of low-income students, such as MPS where 77 percent of the children are considered low-income by federal guidelines.

MPS is offering this program based on the success of a pilot program that ran at six elementary schools during the 2005-06 academic year. At that pilot program, the two schools that served breakfast in the classroom showed dramatic increases in the number of children eating breakfast each morning. Hunger Task Force long advocated to have MPS run this pilot, and we also helped schools set up their breakfast plans and evaluated the pilot with the support of the Congressional Hunger Center.

According to the Food Research and Action Center's 2007 School Breakfast Scorecard, our hard work is paying off! In past years Wisconsin had always ranked dead last (51st in the nation) in providing school breakfast to poor children.  Due, in part, to the universal breakfast model in Milwaukee, Wisconsin has moved up to 46th in its ranking. We're making a difference!   In the 2007-08 school year 72 MPS schools were enrolled in the program, serving 25,000 children breakfast in the morning.