Warwick schools aren’t going to be changing their breakfast program drastically just yet, but a Department of Education initiative may help combat a growing statewide issue: eligible students aren’t taking advantage of free breakfast at school.

The initiative comes in the form of three new breakfast models, according to the department’s communication director Megan Geoghegan. There is breakfast in classroom for the hungry students who get there right as school starts; there is “grab and go,” where students can go by the cafeteria before classes and snag milk, yogurt, fruit, or other breakfast items to bring with them, and there’s second chance breakfast, which is a bagged breakfast students can come down and get between classes to bring with them.

The grab and go breakfast, according to Geoghegan, is especially useful to high school students because many of the older students in the state are getting to school later than younger grades, especially if they’re driving themselves, and this is much easier for them.

The problem can be clearly seen in the numbers, provided by the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), that show the difference between how many eligible students are taking advantage of the free breakfast program compared to the free lunch program.

The current breakfast program serves an average of 29,000 children daily across the state of Rhode Island, including students in public, private, child care, and state schools. 85% of breakfasts are served for free or at a reduced price.

In Warwick, RIDE labels every public school as in “severe need” of an increase in breakfast attendance, yet more than three times the amount of lunches are consumed compared to breakfast, with 77,150 lunches consumed over a 22-day span last March-April compared to 15,545 breakfasts in all Warwick schools.  Pilgrim High School, for example, doled out 10,695 lunches over that span but only 1,530 breakfasts.

The lack of all eligible students taking advantage of the breakfast programs has prompted RIDE commissioner Ken Wagner to spearhead this campaign.

“School nutrition and focusing on nutrition is part of the Governor’s third grade reading challenge, so we’ve been talking about it,” Wagner said. “We have a lot of students who are [taking advantage of the current program] but we could always increase participation.”

That reading challenge, designed by the governor’s office with the goal of 75% of third-graders in the state to be reading at grade level by 2025, pegs proper nutrition as a key factor in the school success of students. That was another reason for RIDE to devise this breakfast challenge to increase the nutritional intake of students around the state.

The initiative is using a diversified approach in trying to get students to take advantage of breakfast programs.

“The traditional approach is you come to school early, go to a certain place, and eat breakfast there,” Commissioner Wagner said. “One of our ideas is that if we modified the approach, allowing students to come a little bit later, we might increase participation.”  

Commissioner Wagner said that food waste isn’t an issue right now because the schools prepare food consistent with the current numbers of students, but the issue is necessary to address because students need nutritional breakfasts to energize themselves for a school day.

“We’re just trying to bring awareness [to the issue] and incentive students,” Wagner said.

As for a potential universal breakfast in the future, Wagner said the federal government has their own strategy for addressing that. For now, RIDE is just trying to increase a participation in breakfast programs that has been lacking so students can be better ready for their classes.