USDA breakfasts provide food without thought

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 1, 1996 | by Susan Crabtree

The school-breakfast program has doubled from $600 million in 1990 to $1.2 billion in 1996.

When working mother Michele Tingling-Clemmons awakens each morning, she no longer worries if one of her three children drank the last glass of milk the day before. Instead, she drops off her two primary-school children at Watkins Elementary in Washington, where she is assured they will receive a nutritious breakfast and the energy they need to focus their attention on the teacher rather than their hunger.

Some 6.3 million children in more than 65,000 schools around the nation sit down to the morning meal in school cafeterias through a federal program that provides the states with $1.2 billion for administration and cost of the breakfasts.

The number of children participating, as well as the money Congress has appropriated for the School Breakfast Program, has skyrocketed during the last five years. Many critics view it as an extension of the federal bureaucracy which encourages parents to abdicate the most basic task of parenting -- feeding their child.

Schools started providing morning meals as a pilot project in 1966; in 1975 Congress permanently authorized the School Breakfast Program. It is administered at the federal level by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA.

Any child at a participating school may purchase a meal either at full or reduced price or receive it free -- depending on the income level of the child's family. Children from families with incomes below 130 percent of the poverty level (currently $19,695 for a family of four) are eligible for free meals. Those between 130 percent and 185 percent of the poverty level are eligible for reduced-price meals, while families earning more than 185 percent of the poverty level pay full price -- which nonetheless includes a government subsidy of approximately 20 percent.

Tingling-Clemmons coordinates the School Breakfast Expansion Campaign at the Food Research and Action Center, or FRAC, a nonprofit advocacy group that deals with food and poverty issues. FRAC launched the campaign to encourage schools to participate in the breakfast program in 1987, and has seen a 72 percent increase in schools offering breakfast, while appropriations for the breakfast service have increased twofold from $600 million in 1990 to $1.2 billion in 1996.

But civil libertarians argue that feeding children is a role for private charities, not the federal government. "Why cycle the dollars through Washington where they trickle down to the state and local level?" asks Dean Stansel, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, noting that only 35 cents of every tax dollar ends up in the hands of the intended beneficiaries.

Last year, the breakfast program became entangled in the ideological school-lunch debate on Capitol Hill. Republicans wanted to send money for the programs to the states in the form of block grants, which allotted a 4.5 percent increase in funding, but would have curtailed the rate of expansion. Vice President Al Gore and Democratic leaders such as Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund, and Jesse Jackson rose in opposition. They staged a "lunch-in" at the Capitol, where they accused Republicans of balancing the budget on the backs of hungry children. The emotional fervor proved too powerful. On March 7, 1996, House Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee Chairman William Goodling of Pennsylvania agreed to drop his insistence on a school-lunch and breakfast block grant in order to avoid another lengthy fight. "We are not going to go through that battle again," says Cheri Jacobus, spokeswoman for the committee. "It's destructive to the overall welfare reform."

Meanwhile the program continues to expand, especially in California, where the state's Department of Education has promoted it actively. On Feb. 14, yet another elementary school in Southern California began serving breakfast. After just one month, some teachers there have become disenchanted with the program, wondering why the federal government is providing additional funds for meals instead of basic educational needs such as textbooks and other teaching materials.

According to the teachers, students rarely complained of morning hunger before breakfasts were offered, yet more than half of the students have qualified for free breakfast at the school, leaving teachers to wonder if families are applying out of convenience rather than necessity. Concern about abuse in the system is warranted. According to the USDA, school districts are required to verify family income levels for only 3 percent of all applications.

Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a Republican from California who heads the Economic and Educational Opportunities subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families, says that the breakfast program exists for a legitimate purpose, but worries that it has expanded far beyond serving needy students. "Through welfare-reform legislation we're working to reduce the bureaucratic paperwork, to make the program work better," he tells Insight. "But at some point parents need to take responsibility to feed their own children nutritious meals at home."