CMS breakfast details fall to schools

Starting Monday,  we'll see how Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools'  new  "free breakfast for all"  program plays out.

Each school is crafting its own strategy for getting food into the hands of hundreds of students,  then getting them to quickly shift gears to learning.  At Elizabeth Traditional Elementary,  where the bus drop-off is nowhere near the cafeteria,  a breakfast kiosk will be in place so kids can grab their food and head to class,  said Amy Harkey,  assistant director of child nutrition.  Some schools will use variations on that  "grab-and-go"  approach,  while others will have children eat in the cafeteria.

The district acknowledges there will be challenges,  from the trash that's generated to the demand on teacher time,  especially now that there are fewer assistants to help with the youngest kids.  One teacher emailed to say he'd been told everyone had to report 15 minutes early to handle breakfast,  but the principal later rescinded that order.

The school board approved the plan in hopes that kids who start their day with a nutritious meal will be better learners.  In the past,  CMS provided free breakfast for students who qualified for income-based lunch aid.  The national No Kid Hungry campaign urges districts to provide breakfast for everyone to eliminate the stigma.  At this week's back-to-school briefing,  Harkey noted that some students go hungry because their families are in a hurry,  not because they can't afford food.

"Students do show up to school hungry,  and hungry students can't learn,"  she said.  "Breakfast is part of the educational day."

Research on the benefits of free school breakfasts is squishy,  in part because no district uses biscuits and bagels as its only strategy to improve education. But CMS leaders hope the new program will get almost 148,000 preK-12 students off to a good start.

CMS has enough students who qualify for federal lunch and breakfast subsidies that it can afford to provide breakfast to all students at no charge,  without dipping into local or state money.  The child nutrition budget is separate from the CMS operating budget,  which means money can't be pulled from teachers,  supplies and other operating costs to cover food  --  or vice versa.

From biscuits to diplomas?

Will Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools'  new free breakfast program produce thousands more graduates?

Well  ...  I'd take that claim with a grain of salt.

Cindy Hobbs,  who heads the CMS child nutrition program,  was ecstatic when the school board OK'ed a plan to provide free breakfast to all students, regardless of family income.  By removing the stigma associated with getting a free meal,  supporters of the plan hope kids will start their school day with a nutritious meal,  eventually improving behavior, attendance and academic performance.

"We could be looking at 3,500 more children to graduate,  based on their 20 percent graduation rate,"  she told the board just before the 7-1 vote.

When I asked about that number,  she acknowledged it's more of a hope than a solid projection,  and one that would take many years to play out.

The CMS presentation used numbers drawn from  "Ending Childhood Hunger: A Social Impact Analysis," done by Deloitte for the advocacy group No Kid Hungry.  It's the kind of study designed to make a case,  with clear language, nice visuals and strong conclusions. It cites findings that students who participate in school breakfast programs attend 1.5 more days of school a year, score 17.5 percent higher on math tests and have fewer behavior problems.  The 20 percent figure comes from a different study,  which found that students who miss fewer than five days of school a year  --  not necessarily those who eat breakfast  --  are 20 percent more likely to graduate.  Based on that,  Deloitte extrapolated that the Maryland program they were reviewing might  "see up to 56,000 additional students achieving math proficiency and 14,000 more high school graduates over time."

Hobbs said she used that same approach to extrapolate a CMS increase in graduates over an unspecified period of time.

The source cited in the Deloitte footnote is a 36-page academic research review on breakfast studies done since the 1990s.  It's harder to get through than a big bowl of unsalted grits.  I did my best,  and found several studies showing that students performed better on some tests,  logged better attendance and appeared to be better behaved when they had breakfast.  But,  as tends to be the case with real academic research,  it's chock full of qualifiers,  along the lines of  "not statistically significant"  and  "another data source produced contradictory results."

There's no mention of any study linking breakfast to graduation rates.

Common sense tells us that sausage biscuits aren't the golden ticket to education reform.  It brings me back to a notion I've written about before,  that real change comes from 100 one-percent solutions, not one or two big reforms.  It would be lunacy to offer free breakfasts and figure the work is done,  but CMS leaders are hoping it's one small piece of a program to help more kids succeed.

While we're on the biscuit beat,  did anyone else cringe at the notion that kids are getting "turkey sausage on a whole-grain biscuit"?  Hobbs told the board that school cafeterias avoid pork because many families have religious prohibitions.

I happen to like turkey sausage.  But a whole-grain biscuit?  Is that even a real thing?

Real biscuits?

Hobbs laughed when I asked.  "They're  ...  OK," she said tactfully.  As a Southerner, she said, she wouldn't serve or eat them,  but the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires certain portions of whole grains in school meals.