St. Louis, Mo., : Normandy Schools Collaborative recently launched its “Breakfast in the Classroom” program at Lucas Crossing Elementary Complex and Barack Obama Elementary School with three of the district’s schools – Jefferson Elementary School, Washington Elementary School, and Normandy High School – to offer the program before year’s end.

Normandy received a $107,000 grant for its 3,300 students from Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC), a network of national education and nutrition organizations including the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), the NEA Foundation, and the School Nutrition Foundation.

The program is designed to serve nutritionally well-balanced breakfasts that meet the current USDA nutrition standards for the School Breakfast Program (SBP).  The BIC program is an in-class model that encourages all students to participate in breakfast.  The School Breakfast Program is a federally assisted meal program operating in public and non-profit private schools and residential child care institutions since 1975.

States across the country are requiring schools to make the transition toward non-traditional breakfast service like Breakfast in the Classroom.  In fact, 12 states have already enacted legislation that require low-income schools with low breakfast participation to implement non-traditional breakfast service.

According to the Food Research & Action Center’s recently released School Breakfast Scorecard, more than 226,000 low-income children in Missouri participated in the national School Breakfast Program on an average school day in 2017-2018.  Operation Food Search notes that 17.4 percent of children in Missouri – nearly one in six children – live in households that struggle with hunger.

On a national basis, 57% of low-income students who participate in the school lunch program also participated in school breakfast.  In Missouri, 60.9% of low-income students who receive school lunch also receive school breakfast.  93.6% of Missouri schools that offer lunch also offer breakfast.

Founded in 1981, Operation Food Search (OFS) is a hunger relief organization that provides food and nutrition education.  With a strategic focus aimed at ending childhood hunger, OFS empowers families with a range of programs and services proven to reduce food insecurity and increase access to healthy and affordable food.  The agency helps feed more than 200,000 individuals on a monthly basis – one-third of which are children – through a network of 330 community partners in 31 Missouri and Illinois counties.  Operation Food Search is located at 1644 Lotsie Blvd.