Breakfast Class
November 24th, 2008
Dara L. Miles reports on how anything involving the New York City schools can spawn a controversy.
The Department of Education is working to change the way breakfast is served in New York City’s public schools in pursuit of a laudable goal — getting more kids to eat that first meal of the day.
New York schools have been offering free breakfast since 2003. Teachers, administrators and advocates agree that a nutritious breakfast improves student concentration and performance, but participation in New York’s program has been low. Only one in five students ate breakfast at school in the 2006-2007 school year, giving the city’s schools one of the lowest participation rates in the country.
Advocates say the problem is in the timing and in the students’ perceptions of the breakfast program. Most kids can’t get to school early enough for breakfast, which is served before buses arrive. Moreover, the free morning meal tends to carry a social stigma: Only the “poor kids” eat the school breakfast.
To remedy that, the education department tested a “Breakfast in the Classroom” program in 48 schools last year. Despite budget cuts, it hopes to expand it to 300 schools in needy neighborhoods.
Under the pilot program, students receive pre-packaged breakfasts in select classrooms at the start of the day, when teachers are taking attendance or reading aloud to the class. David Berkowitz, the head of the Office of School Food and Nutrition Services — known as “SchoolFood” — told a City Council hearing last week that some teachers were initially reluctant to participate for fear of losing precious teaching time, but embraced the program when they saw the difference breakfast made in their students’ ability to concentrate and learn.
Best of all, the students ate. “The kids like the food,” Berkowitz told council members, “and they like the social experience.”
Principals, though, have their doubts. According to Berkowitz, some declined to participate in the pilot program, saying it could disrupt teaching, overburden custodial services, and attract rats and other vermin. Berkowitz dismissed the concerns: It only takes the children 10 to 12 minutes to eat, and the classroom meals have created little disruption to teaching time and have not created problems with rats or roaches, he told council.
Advocates of the program suggested that the Department of Education should require—or at least strongly encourage—principals to participate.
The committee hearing got off to rocky start, when Robert Jackson, who chairs the education committee, scolded Berkowitz for SchoolFood’s failure to provide the council with requested information. Apparently Jackson has even more trouble getting information from the Department of Education than the news media does, and that’s saying something.
As the hearing opened, Jackson told Berkowitz that he had even looked for data on the websites maintained by the department and by SchoolFood, but could find nothing there.
That prompted an apology from Berkowitz, but Jackson wasn’t buying it. “I do not accept your apology. Over the course of my tenure, I have received many apologies from DOE for not getting us information. I don’t accept your apology,” he said, “especially when we have to read
about it in the New York Times. That’s not collaborative.”
“I’m going to be asking a lof of questions, ” he told Berkowitz, “and I hope you have some answers.”
By Gail Robinson on November 24, 2008, 5:30 pmIn category: Education, Gotham City, Health
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