But policymakers need to improve access to quality schools, the report says. Specifically, parents need better tools to make good choices, it says, and they need good schools to choose from.
A higher percentage of low-income children who participated in school lunch programs in 2013-14 also ate school breakfasts than in the previous year, according to the report from the Food Research and Action Center.
FRAC calculated its figures “by comparing the number of low-income children receiving school breakfast to the number of such children receiving school lunch,” the report says. “By this measure, nationally 53 low-income children ate school breakfast for every 100 who also ate school lunch, an increase from the previous school year’s ratio of 52 to 100, and far above the 43 to 100 ratio of a decade earlier.”
Advocates for children’s nutrition attribute increased school breakfast participation to strategies like breakfast-in-the classroom programs and the “community eligibility” option, which allows some schools to serve free meals to all students rather than requiring them to qualify individually.
