August 2014

School Breakfast Grants Available

General Mills Foodservice and National Dairy Council® are partnering once again to help K-12 schools expand their breakfast programs by offering Fuel Up™ Breakfast Grants. This is the sixth consecutive year General Mills has worked with National Dairy Council® to offer Fuel Up™ Breakfast Grants to schools within the United States that participate in the National School Breakfast Program and are enrolled in the Fuel Up to Play 60 program.  Grant applications will be accepted until Aug. 29.

Read more.

The Breakfast Building Grants Program is designed to help recipient schools increase student breakfast participation by providing supplemental funding to support or enhance an existing program or jump-start a new program. Grants of up to $1,000 will be awarded on a rolling basis. Find out more.

Community Eligibility Deadline Extended to August 31

USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) extended the deadline for school districts to elect to participate in the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) — a new federal option that allows high poverty schools to offer breakfast and lunch at no charge to all students. School districts now have until August 31, 2014 to notify their state agency for the 2014-2015 school year that they would like to operate CEP. See USDA memo (pdf) for more information. State lists of the 28,000 eligible schools and 3,000 school districts eligible district-wide are available on USDA’s website.

Check out two new CEP resources:

• The Community Eligibility Provision: Alternatives to School Meal Applications (pdf)
• How to Identify Low-Income Students in Community Eligibility Schools for Title I Purposes

Webinar: Breakfast for Learning

On Tues., Aug. 19 at 3 p.m., the Food Research and Action Center will host a webinar to help school officials learn why more education groups are promoting greater access to school breakfast so that children of all income levels start the school day alert, attentive and ready to learn – and how you can join them.

The School Breakfast Program helps school children to start the day with the nutrients they need to support their health and academic potential. Children who eat breakfast perform better academically and experience fewer visits to the school nurse. In fact, research shows that participation in school breakfast has been linked to fewer occurrences of student hunger, decreased tardiness and absenteeism, and improved focus and cognitive abilities.

Register today for this free webinar.

School Breakfast Challenge Grant Winners to be Announced

The NJ Food for Thought Campaign will announce the winners of the NJ School Breakfast Challenge later this month. The winners will receive grants for breakfast equipment and the top two districts will get a visit from an NFL player. Winners will be recognized at an event this fall. Stay tuned for details.