Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York (CCC) is a 68-year-old independent, non-profit, child advocacy organization, dedicated to ensuring that every New York child is healthy, housed, educated and safe. CCC is devoted to increasing children’s ability to access healthy food. A substantial body of literature shows that eating breakfast, which is widely recognized to be the most important meal of the day, beneficially impacts children’s well-being and academic outcomes. CCC’s advocacy therefore includes efforts to improve children’s access to nutritious breakfasts.

The School Breakfast Program (SBP), a federally assisted meal program operating in public and non-profit private schools, plays a critical role in ensuring that children have the opportunity to eat breakfast. The SBP reimburses participating schools for every in-school breakfast that they serve.2 In exchange for this federal cash subsidy, participating schools offer free or reduced-price breakfasts to income-eligible children, and agree to serve breakfasts that meet federal dietary standards.

New York City public schools participate in SBP, and offer free breakfast to all students, regardless of their income-eligibility status. Even though New York City’s SBP is universal, it does bear noting that a substantial number of New York City public school students qualify for free or reduced-price meals; out of New York City’s over one million public school students, almost 725,000 are free or reduced-price eligible. Despite these facts, recently-released data show that New York City’s school breakfast participation rate is low. According to the Food Research and Action Center’s (FRAC) 2012 report entitled School Breakfast in America’s Big Cities, during the 2010-2011 school year, for every 100 eligible low-income New York City public school children who participated in the National School Lunch Program, only 33.9 ate in-school breakfast. Among the 26 major American cities that FRAC studied, New York’s 33.9 percent school breakfast participation rate was the lowest, trailing some of the best-performing cities, such as Newark (87.2 percent) and Detroit (86.8 percent), by over 50 percentage points.

Given the significant share of New York City students who are income eligible for free or reduced-price meals and the City’s troubling breakfast participation rate, there is a clear need to explore ways in which to increase the number of children who eat breakfast at school. One method to improve the consumption of breakfast at school is to expand the City’s use of the Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC) program, which provides in-classroom breakfast to children at the start of the school day. The New York City Department of Education Office of School Food has made progress in implementing and expanding the BIC program, but more work remains to be done. The majority of New York City public school students who eat breakfast at school still do so in the cafeteria, early in the morning before the start of the school day.

In December 2011, while 338 of New York City’s over 1,600 public schools participated in the BIC program, only 64 of these schools provided BIC in every classroom. In the remaining 274 schools that offered BIC, differing numbers of classrooms engaged in the program, with some schools piloting BIC in a single classroom, or for classes at a specific grade level. In sum, while there has been some advancement, very few New York City students receive BIC and there is much room to expand the program.

CCC supports the expansion of BIC in New York City schools because we strongly believe it will improve children’s access to this necessary meal. The BIC method of in-classroom breakfast distribution is the best strategy to increase children’s participation in SBP, because it helps to reduce the barriers that otherwise prevent students from eating breakfast at school. For example, BIC removes the need for parents to rush their children to school early in the morning, before the school day begins, in order to guarantee that their children eat breakfast in the school cafeteria. BIC also eliminates the stigma some children feel when receiving a free meal in the cafeteria, prior to the beginning of the school day. Because BIC helps diminish these obstacles, it results in more children actually eating breakfast, which is critical to their healthy development and ability to achieve academically.

In an effort to learn more about New York City’s low school breakfast participation rates, New York City School breakfasts in general, and BIC in particular, CCC surveyed New York City parents about their children’s school breakfasts. Those surveyed thought breakfast was important for their children and appreciated that their children could receive a free breakfast at school. When asked specifically about the BIC program, some survey participants, most of whose children had never received in-classroom breakfast, were unfamiliar with this program or its benefits. Conversely, almost all survey participants whose children currently or previously participated in the BIC program thought that the program was advantageous for their children.

Despite survey participants’ primarily positive views regarding breakfast and the free distribution of breakfast in school, about a quarter of the survey participants’ children had not eaten breakfast “every day” in the prior school week. The survey results also showed that “at home” was the most popular location in which survey participants’ children had eaten breakfast in the preceding school week, although many survey participants reported that their children had eaten breakfast “at school” at some point during that same time period. Survey participants’ children were least likely to have eaten breakfast “on the way to school.”

Survey participants’ responses to questions about where and how often their children had eaten breakfast in the week prior varied somewhat by borough. Notably, the children of survey participants in the Bronx were less likely than the children of Manhattan and Brooklyn survey participants to have eaten breakfast “every day” during the previous school week. Bronx survey participants’ children were also less likely than the children of other survey participants to have eaten breakfast in their homes “every day” in the preceding week.

Finally, more than half of all survey participants reported that their children had “never” eaten breakfast “at home” and “at school” on the same day, while just over a third stated that their child had done so at some point in time. Our information gathered did not include data about the caloric and nutritional content or portion sizes of what the survey participants’ children had eaten for breakfast in any location. Therefore, we could not, from this information alone, determine whether survey participants’ children who had eaten breakfast in more than one location on the same day had consumed food that fell short of or exceeded the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recommendations about the nutritional and caloric make-up of a healthy breakfast.

The following is a detailed discussion of CCC’s survey methodology, findings, and recommendations.