Forging Fresh Ways to Serve Breakfast

Everyone agrees that children need to start their school day with a full stomach. Yet New Jersey’s participation in the federal School Breakfast Program is nearly the lowest in the country. That’s because many New Jersey districts serve breakfast before school starts when most children have not yet arrived at school.

The solution is to serve breakfast after school starts. Known as “Breakfast After the Bell,” this approach significantly boosts participation and gives more kids a nutritious start to the school day that can help them concentrate and learn.

Since the program is federally funded, most districts with high concentrations of low-income children can feed all students at little or no extra cost, significantly leveraging the considerable investment New Jersey makes in public education.

Learn more with this short school breakfast fact sheet.
View school breakfast fact sheet in Spanish.

Take the Challenge!

While the number of New Jersey districts serving breakfast after the bell is growing, the majority continue to serve breakfast before school. The NJ Food for Thought Campaign, along with the Departments of Education and Agriculture, the American Dairy Association, the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Council and Advocates for Children of New Jersey are sponsoring a NJ School Breakfast Challenge to encourage more districts to adopt smarter ways of serving school breakfast.

Learn more about the challenge.

Led by Advocates for Children of New Jersey and the New Jersey Anti-Hunger Coalition, the Food For Thought campaign is driven by a statewide steering committee that includes New Jersey anti-hunger, education and health organizations, state agencies and child advocates. The Food Research Action Center and the American Dairy Association and Council are the campaign's national partners. The campaign has set a goal to increase school breakfast participation by 30 percent by June 2013 – and is well on the way to meeting that goal.

Join the campaign.