A nutritious breakfast is essential for children's learning. There are two benefits from giving children a good breakfast — filling their bellies and energizing their brains.
The Community of Roland Springs has a variety of family units — single-parent and two-parent families. Any of these may be low-income households. Many have a parent or both parents working, where cost may not be a major factor. Education about a healthy breakfast and time constraints could derail their best intentions to provide a nutritious, protein-filled breakfast to students in the morning.
Often our schools provide breakfast to students from low-income homes. I propose that we enhance and expand this program to bolster all students learning capabilities. Parents whose children are not in the low-income program could be offered the choice to participate and pay in advance for their children's breakfasts with delivery at school in the same setting as is currently used.
Schools would be modeling healthy nutritious habits, an important factor to cutting the obesity problem. It would remove any stigma for children currently in the free or reduced price meals program.
This wouldn't be too hard to implement. Schools already have the kitchen staffing for breakfast and the dining room for delivery. A key goal would be to make the offerings tasty and include protein each day.
The enhancement to the current program could be done at little additional cost. If done properly, why wouldn't all parents participate? More importantly, why wouldn't all schools do this?
Patricia Sarratt, Baltimore