During the month of October La Plata high school and 35 other Charles county public schools have opted to provide its student body with free breakfast, from October 3rd until October 28th Charles county public schools will be doing this to insure a healthy productive morning and encourage healthy habits in its students. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children that eat a healthy breakfast exhibit better memorization skills, a higher attention span, healthier body weights and demonstrate an overall improvement in nutrition choices. This in turn can help to support the personal and academic success of children at school.
Last school year, CCPS food and nutrition services served 2.4 million lunches and 1.7 million breakfasts to students. According to William Kreuter, supervisor of food and nutrition services for CCPS, the school system has grown from serving 3,000 breakfasts per day in 2010 to about 10,500 a day in 2016. Ccboe.com/start-the-school-day-right.
However this free breakfast initiative does not apply to a la carte meals, meaning that students are limited to picking and choosing what they want for breakfast. Students who take advantage of the free breakfast are limited to a peanut butter and jelly Uncrustable sandwich or a cereal and their choice of a juice or milk.
On the schools menu (http://ccboe.nutrislice.com/menu/la-plata/breakfast/) throughout the month they are only selling the “breakfast break kits” until Monday October 28th. Starting October 31st the school system will return to its normal menus. Normally school breakfast menu consist of mini pancakes, muffins, waffles, sausage patties, etc. The school breakfasts normally cost $1.25 in primary schools and $1.40 in secondary plus an extra 50 cents for milk.
Pros and Cons
There are always two sides to each story, and in this case those two sides are the goods and bads of free second chance breakfast.
Some pros would be the fact that more students in the Charles county school system are getting a nutritious breakfast. With this increase in students receiving nutritious breakfasts there has been an increase in students grades. An exert from the Chicago Tribune states “To establish a link between diet and academic performance, University of Alberta (Canada) researchers evaluated the lifestyle and performance of some 5,000 children. Students who ate an adequate amount of fruit, vegetables, protein and fiber, with less calorie intake from fat, did better on their literacy tests than those eating foods high in salt and saturated fat.”
Where there are pros there must be cons. One such con would be that with this chance to get free food and with this increase in people taking advantage of a second breakfast, there are too many people in one area at one time. This increase in people at one place all at the same time has caused some students to become late for class.
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