The district’s free breakfast program is failing to keep its commitment to provide a nutritious breakfast to students who qualified for the reduced lunch program.

Girls need at least 1,800 calories and boys need over 2,000 calories per day. A pop tart and an apple, coming in at 200 and 100 calories respectively, make up the free breakfast offered on the last day of the fifth week of the program.

The menu for other days are hardly more impressive. A Nutribar and a piece of fruit, yogurt and graham crackers; at no point do the estimated calories of the district’s menu get above 600. The district isn’t obligated to supply the total caloric needs of every student, but they are obligated to uphold their promises.

This is an unfortunate state of affairs, especially given how easy it would be to provide a sufficient, even ideal breakfast to the large number of students who qualify for this program.

Eggs are an incredibly cheap and nutritious breakfast food, simply making a dozen pans of scrambled eggs would go a much further way towards providing a staisfactory breakfast.

It’s just not understandable. It’s not like the district is skimping to save money for another area by providing an inadequete meal. I could tolerate that, even if I didn’t necessarily like it. That money for the new volleyball equipment has to come from somewhere.

But neither is happening. We need to see some less neutral behavior from the district. Either commit to giving a poor breakfast, maybe a couple Ritz crackers, so that the district can spend the money saved on learning equipment, and at least we students will see some sort of benefit, or commit to using the allocated funds for a decent, filling breakfast.

As a student myself, I know I’d prefer to have a whole breakfast in the morning. I don’t always have the opportunity to do this, however.

Some days I wake up too late, or shower too long, or for any variety of reasons don’t make myself a breakfast. These days I am noticably less focused and more irritably than on days when I’ve been able to  sit down to a stack of pancakes.

There are other reasons the district should get its act together concerning this program. Numerous studies show that a healthy breakfast positively correalates to students’ higher test scores.

This directly benefits the district. These higher test scores mean higher rankings and more funding for the office, and higher scores make it that much easier for those kids to enter higher-level schooling after they leave high school.

There’s too much evidence that supports a healthy breakfast in the morning. As moms around the world say, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Everybody wins when the students get fed. So what’s the hold-up?