In-class breakfast settles kids

They dined on sausage biscuits, low-fat milk and orange juice —- some to music, some to television, some to just peace and quiet.

No one would call this “room service,” but as breakfast in the classroom goes at Slater Elementary School, “desktop dining” might suffice.

For two months now, the morning feasts have been as much a part of the students’ day as reading, writing and arithmetic.

Indeed, school officials say, easing into the school day with breakfast in the classroom is slowly changing the entire dynamics of these once-chaotic halls of learning. Not only has it significantly boosted the number of students eating breakfast, school attendance has shot up, and tardiness and disciplinary problems have gone way down.

The school’s principal, Selena Dukes-Walton, said, for instance, she once collected four pages of tardy students’ names and now she’s down to half a page. The number of students eating breakfast has nearly doubled from 280 to 440.

“That’s the beauty of this,” she said. “We’re very excited.”

Serving free breakfast to students whose family incomes qualify them for a government subsidy is nothing new. But traditionally, students needed to arrive 30 minutes before school to eat the meals in the cafeteria or wait until lunch.

At Slater, where 98 percent of the 557 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, some still follow that routine. The in-class pilot program is limited to those in first through fourth grades.

School districts across the country have been trying new ways to get more students to use the federally reimbursed school breakfast program, especially as more children become eligible for free and reduced-priced meals amid the recession.

The program was introduced to Slater by Sodexo Jackmont in March shortly after the Atlanta Public Schools food service company noticed the school, located near downtown in the Carver community, had a high number of low-income students.

The program will expand next year to include the entire student body and five additional schools, said Keanan Grant, general manager of Sodexo.

Studies show that students who eat breakfast are calmer, less anxious, more focused and learn better.

And eating at school, Dukes-Walton said, tends to organize children’s day.

According to the Food Research and Action Center in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit advocacy group that works to eradicate hunger and poor nutrition among children and families, about 8.5 million children nationally participated in school breakfast programs last year.

“For a lot of children, school meals are their only guaranteed meal for the day,” said Rachel Cooper, a senior policy analyst with the center. “And as more families struggle in this economy, having a free and reduced-price breakfast program becomes even more important.”

Cooper said that because the programs vary from state to state and from school district to school district, it’s hard to say how widespread it is.

“It changes all the time,” she said. “A lot of districts provide it in some schools but not others.”

At Slater, breakfast is served at 7:30 a.m.; shortly after, students are dismissed from the gymnasium by grade level and file into their classrooms, where cafeteria staff have already delivered the day’s meal.

Monday and Wednesday, students have their choice of cereal, milk and orange juice. On Tuesday, the menu calls for a chicken biscuit; on Thursday, a sausage biscuit; and on Friday, an oatmeal bar and whole-wheat graham crackers.

“I love the oatmeal,” said 10-year-old Kaelan Craig.

On a recent Thursday, Kaelan and Tim Bradford were in charge of serving their fourth-grade classmates in Room 206.

As students ate, teacher Ellen Grant gently reminded them of the day’s lesson —- plant life.

By 8 a.m., they were all done and ready to get down to the business of learning.