Before the school day begins, hundreds of thousands of students across North Carolina eat school breakfast — in the cafeteria, in the classroom, from grab-and-go kiosks, and more.

In the , the most recent available data, more than 73 million school breakfasts were served to roughly 470,000 students across the state. The majority of them were provided for free.

that eating school breakfast is associated with a variety of positive outcomes for students, including improved and better .

“School breakfast offers a peace of mind to these students that do not get food at home,” said Keli McNeill, a parent in Richmond County, during a meeting ahead of . “They can come into school knowing, ‘I might be hungry right now, but in another 10 minutes, I’m not going to be hungry anymore, because I’m going to have food, and I’m going to be able to make it through my day.’ It’s about so much more than food.”

Yet traditional school breakfast approaches, which often require students to arrive before class begins and eat in the cafeteria, can limit access to these important meals.

To increase participation in school breakfast, districts across the state are implementing innovative breakfast models, including breakfast served in the classroom, grab-and-go kiosks, and second chance breakfast, often served after first period.

In 2024, then-Gov. Roy Cooper in NC Innovative School Breakfast Grants to help 42 school districts and charter schools implement innovative school breakfast models and expand student participation.

Districts are also increasingly offering free breakfast to all students under the federal (CEP), available to high-poverty schools.

Advocates in North Carolina, including the coalition, have called for school breakfast to be provided to all students at no cost. In March 2025, Gov. Josh Stein for all public school students in his state budget proposal.

Then, in April, a “” bill was introduced in the General Assembly, sponsored by four Republican House members. Although the bill did not move forward, it garnered support from both Democrats and Republicans, with more than 50 sponsors.

“If we really want to change our education system, one way is to start by giving every student a nice, nutritious start to the day,” said Tami Poland, principal of Swift Creek Elementary in Johnston County, during the School Meals for All NC meeting.

Innovative breakfast models increase participation in Mitchell County Schools

Heather Calhoun has worked in , located in the mountains of western North Carolina, for 27 years. Calhoun considers herself a big advocate for school breakfast and said she has seen the benefits that eating breakfast provides to students firsthand.

“We know hungry kids are not going to learn — they’re not going to do well on tests,” she said, adding that skipping breakfast can also lead to malnutrition and poor behavior.

Today, the roughly in Mitchell County Schools are served free breakfast and lunch through CEP. But according to Calhoun, the district offered free breakfast to all students even before CEP was in place. Soon after, participation in school meals increased as the stigma associated with identifying students by their free, reduced, or paid meals status was gone.

“That’s one of the things I think has really been great for our county and our students — making sure that they have a good breakfast every day,” she said.

The district has also implemented two innovative models to increase participation: breakfast in the classroom and second chance breakfast.

For K-8 students, a cart in the hallway allows them to pick up breakfast and eat it in their homeroom while morning announcements and other activities begin. Calhoun said these breakfast carts have been the most effective approach in increasing breakfast participation, and that students participate at much higher rates compared to serving breakfast in the cafeteria.

“If you say, ‘OK, come into the lunchroom and come through the line and get it,’ they don’t do it,” she said. “We tried that one time … and half the kids didn’t eat.”

For high school students, a second chance breakfast is provided in addition to traditional breakfast in the cafeteria. After the first class block, a cart circles around the hallways, offering a chance for students to eat who may have missed breakfast before the first bell.

“A lot of kids at the high school, they’re not going to get there 30 minutes before class, or they want to go hang out with their friends,” said Calhoun. “They don’t want to stop by the cafeteria.”

Students’ favorite breakfast items include chicken biscuits, sausage biscuits, and a cheese stick with yogurt or whole grain crackers.

Calhoun said she would like to serve more protein-rich and less grain-focused items, but that those products can often be more expensive, making it difficult to serve them within current federal reimbursement rates. For each free school breakfast served, school districts receive roughly , which has to cover the costs of food, labor, equipment, and more.

Even if an affordable item is identified, other barriers can stand in the way of sourcing new products. There may be manufacturing or procurement challenges, or the product might not be available in bulk, requiring more staff capacity to individually wrap each item before it goes on the breakfast cart.

“It’s like a Rubik’s Cube — I always say that about school nutrition,” said Calhoun. “It’s like that puzzle, where you have to fit all the pieces together.”

Free breakfast for all makes a difference at Dillard Academy

Located in Goldsboro, is a K-8 public charter school that opened in 1998 with the goal of providing more personalized instruction for local students. That’s according to Danielle Baptiste, the school’s executive director and daughter of the school’s founder, .

In addition to overseeing the day-to-day operations of Dillard Academy, Baptiste also serves as the school nutrition director, ensuring roughly have access to meals each day.

“We’re a very small school, and so you end up having to be that jack-of-all-trades,” she said.

Through CEP, all students receive free meals at Dillard Academy. When students get off of the bus, they have the opportunity to go into the cafeteria and eat, with about 60% of students participating in breakfast each morning. If students get dropped off late, breakfast service continues until 9 a.m.

“We really want to make sure that our students are fed and have that basic level of need met when they go into the classroom so they can maximize their instruction, their learning,” said Baptiste.

As a small charter school, Baptiste said being able to provide free meals to all students has provided multiple benefits. It serves as a draw for parents, who have the peace of mind that there will always been food available for their student. For the school’s small staff, it has reduced the administrative burden of providing meals, as they do not have to collect meal applications or verify eligibility for free or reduced-price meals.

“It’s super simple — every child with a lunch number gets a free lunch and a free breakfast and a free snack,” said Baptiste.

She has also seen a reduction in the stigma associated with participating in school meals, especially among older students.

“It’s not necessarily cool to eat in the cafeteria — but if they see something they really like, they can make that decision right there on the spot,” she said.

Baptiste said her mother’s decision to offer school breakfast and lunch from the very first day the charter school opened reflects a strong belief in the importance of meeting students’ basic needs.

“In education, we don’t always think about how important it is to make sure our students are well fed — and that really feeds their brain for the rest of the day,” said Baptiste.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Two-thirds of Ohioans support a universal free school breakfast and lunch program for all public school children, according to a Republican research firm.

“This is extremely rare in a time where voters are really reluctant to support further spending, either at the state or federal level,” Alexi Donovan, vice president of Tarrance Group Polling, said Monday during the monthly meeting.

This month’s meeting heard testimony on the importance of universal school meals and Tarrance Group Polling surveyed 600 Ohio voters about this topic in May.

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“It is clear from the research and the data over the years, universal school meals help students thrive, physically, mentally, socially and educationally,” said John Stanford, director of Children’s Defense Fund–Ohio.

In Ohio, 1 in 6 children, or about 413,000 kids, live in a household that experiences hunger. Despite that, more than 1 in 3 children who live in a food insecure household do not qualify for school meals, according to a from Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio.

“We believe that in a country as wealthy as we are, we should not have hungry children,” said Lisa Quigley, director of .

Exposing students to various fruits and vegetables through school meals helps them get a taste for “food that’s far more nutritious than what a lot of them are bringing to school,” she said.

“What we’re finding in the schools that are doing universal school meals, the food is getting better,” Quigley said.

National security

Children’s hunger is a national security issue, said Cynthia Rees, Ohio’s director for the Council for a Strong America.

The that found 77% of young people between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible for military service without a waiver. The most prevalent disqualification rate was for being overweight at 11%, above drug and alcohol abuse (8%) and medical/physical health (7%).

“It is critical to recognize that overweight and obesity can often be manifestations of malnutrition, food insecurity or the lack of access to affordable healthy foods often result in consuming cheaper and more accessible food, which often lack nutritional value,” Rees said.

The food insecurity rate for Ohio children is 15%, with some counties having rates up to 24%, Rees said.

“Increasing children’s access to fresh and nutritious food now, including through free school meals for all students, could help America recover from the present challenges and bolster national security in the future,” she said. “The military has a long standing interest in the health and nutrition of our nation’s youth.”

Universal school meals would eliminate the stigma of categorizing students who receive free and reduced meals and those that don’t, Rees said.

“Instead, all students can just have a meal together,” she said. “When we make school meals accessible to all, we remove that stigma.”

Ohio legislation

Last year’s budget bill allowed any student who qualified for free or reduced school breakfast or lunch got those meals for free during the 2023-24 school year.

Currently in Ohio, children are eligible for free or reduced school meals if their household income is up to 185% of the federal poverty line, which is $57,720 for a family of four, according to the .

State Reps. Darnell Brewer, D-Cleveland, and Ismail Mohamed, D-Columbus, introduced a bill earlier this year that would require public schools to provide a meal to any student that asks.

would also ban a district from throwing away a meal after it was served “because of a student’s inability to pay for the meal or because money is owed for previously provided meals.” The has only had sponsor testimony so far in the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

“You can’t teach a hungry child,” Cooper said. “If a child hasn’t eaten, then clearly that child is going to be more distracted, and it’s going to be more difficult to make sure that they learn.”

Innovative breakfast options, like the breakfast served in classrooms at Glenn Elementary, help improve student success in academics while lowering the need for discipline, said Jim Keaten, the executive director of child nutrition services at .

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“I think it’s starting to show in the academics that the kids being able to eat and focus and spend more time—instructional time— is really making an impact. And they’re focusing on education as opposed to discipline,” Keaten said.

The funding will provide grants of up to $50,000 per school nutrition program to allow schools to better provide students innovative school breakfast options, such as breakfast in the classroom, grab-and-go breakfasts, or second chance breakfasts, when students have the option of eating breakfast during a break.

“Hopefully it can get more school systems and schools involved in this program because we know that it means a lot for them to do this,” Cooper said.

Cooper is partnering with the (NCAH) and the (CHI) for this effort.

The governor said the effort would particularly help schools with high numbers of low income students.

The innovative breakfast program at Glenn Elementary, which has been in place for about two years, allows all students — regardless of economic status — to arrive to class early for a free breakfast and receive bonus instructional time with teachers while they eat.

In the past two years, Glenn Elementary School’s performance grade has increased by 15 points, said Principal Matthew Hunt, and the extra time students can spend with their teachers has added about three additional weeks of instructional time for some students.

“Food is the most important school supply, and getting kids off to a good start early in the morning with a good breakfast is, I think, the right thing to do,” said Morgan Wittman Gramann, executive director of NCAH.

Tanitra Edwards, a third grade math and science teacher at Glenn Elementary, said she is a fan of the program as it allows her more time to connect with her students, especially those who might need extra help.

“If there’s a student that I know is needing a little more support or something from a previous day, I’m allowed to work with them (at) that time,” Edwards said. “Of course, if they were in the cafeteria, I wouldn’t have that time with them.”

Cooper participated and observed as students at Glenn Elementary School were served individual bags of breakfast food early in the morning. Students in Edwards’ class worked on an online math game while they ate.

“They just love coming in and having those options available,” Edwards said.

Keaten recalled the stigma he felt as a child eating free breakfast at school, when students who needed free meals were separated from others, letting everyone know who the “poor kid” was. Free universal breakfasts for all students cuts down on that stigma, he said.

“To be able to get all the kids to eat in the classroom with no stigma to me is just a tremendous gain,” Keaten said. “It’s like one of my life goals to take that stigma away from kids.”

The innovative breakfast program at Glenn Elementary emerged due to necessity during the pandemic as students had to eat in classrooms rather than in the cafeteria, Keaten said.

While eating in the classrooms, the school found students had more time to complete homework and receive help while school staff completed administrative tasks and morning announcements before class began, freeing up time during the school day, Keaten said.

Cooper said other ways to mitigate hunger among students include adequately funding public schools and teachers while employing more school social workers and counselors who can help support the “whole child” and their family.

“Our schools can help connect families to services and help children not only get better nutrition, but be safer and have healthier lives all together,” Cooper said.

Expanded breakfast programs will also benefit students who may have food available at home, but aren’t ready to eat first thing in the morning at home, Cooper said.

The $1.4 million in funding comes from the federal Emergency Assistance for Non-Public Schools funds that have gone to the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief fund.

Applications for the grants will open in the next few months. When approved, the school systems will receive the support for their breakfast programs. All funding must be spent by September 2024.

“We celebrate this amazing opportunity to create more access for breakfast for more kids through innovative breakfast programs,” said Lou Anne Crumpler, director of CHI.

In the wake of the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture provided all public school students across the nation with free breakfasts and lunches, though that opportunity ended at the start of the 2022-23 school year.

Cooper said on Tuesday that state is making efforts toward securing universal lunches for students, though the work is still in progress. The 2023-24 state budget included funding to , which means students qualifying for reduced-price lunches can now eat for free. The co-pay for reduced-price breakfast was eliminated in 2011.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

As New Jersey students returned to classrooms this week, the number of them eligible for free or reduced school breakfast and lunch jumped — and hunger insecurity advocates are eyeing ways to make those meals free for all children.

“We are hopeful — since New Jersey has done so much and really led the way in addressing hunger and food insecurity — that in this next legislative session, they can get a school-meals-for-all bill passed,” said Lisa Pitz of Hunger Free New Jersey.

About 26,000 new students  program this school year thanks to a bill Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law last September. That’s in addition to the more than who received free or reduced breakfast and lunch between 2019 and 2020, the most recently available data.

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The law, known as the Working Class Families’ Anti-Hunger Act, expanded eligibility to families who earn 200% of the federal poverty level. That translates to households with three children earning $46,060 maximum, or for those with two children, $36,620.

It also requires all school districts to provide a free school breakfast and lunch program and to publicize its availability to their communities.

While experts applauded the new law, signed soon after pandemic-era  providing free lunches expired, nutrition experts and food hunger advocates want to see more action from state lawmakers.

“There’s definitely interest at the state level in going for a universal meals program for the state. It’s just a matter of getting everyone on board and finding the will to do it,” said Sal Valenza, public policy chair for the New Jersey School Nutrition Association.

The Assembly passed a bill () in June that would further expand eligibility for free and reduced school meals for the 2024-25 school year. The bill would also require the creation of a task force that would study school food security issues and recommend state- and federal-level action.

A spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-Middlesex), a prime sponsor of the legislation, said he believes every child should have access to meals at school, and the bill advanced in June will “put New Jersey on the path to accomplish that goal.”

The bill still needs to advance in the state Senate, where it has yet to be heard in committee. It is expected to cost the state about $57 million.

that would phase in free school lunches for all students by 2028 advanced out of an Assembly committee in June but did not win full approval before the Legislature went on its summer recess. Under that bill, which is estimated to cost the state more than $500 million after it’s phased in, New Jersey would join a handful of other states to provide free school meals for all students.  Massachusetts officials made school lunches available to all public school students regardless of income level.

But New Jersey would be an outlier by using the phase-in approach, noted Pitz.

“Really, the time to act on this is now,” she said. “We don’t ask our kids to pay for their textbooks or when they take the bus. School meals should just be part of their school day so that all kids can learn and grow to their full potential.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com. Follow New Jersey Monitor on and .