Plymouth Public Schools Celebrate National School Breakfast Week

Breakfast sandwiches, parfaits, egg bites, oats, omelets, fresh fruit, and baked potatoes from local farms are just some of the menu items Plymouth Public Schools offers to its students on their way to homeroom. Since school meals became free for all student thanks to federal waivers during the pandemic and were subsequently made permanent with the passage of School Meals for All legislation in Massachusetts at the top of this academic year, school breakfast participation in Plymouth Public Schools has more than doubled from 893 students on average daily to 1857 students as of October 2023. Still, without adequate state funding allocated to free school meals, students’ uninterrupted access to nutrition during the 2024-2025 school year is in jeopardy.

“Having free school meals for all students means everything, the biggest thing is that the stigma of free-reduced and paid is taken away,” says Patrick Van Cott, Director of Food Services at Plymouth Public Schools. “Now, we’re able to focus more on the kids, hire additional staff, and enhance our menus with more local sourced and nutritious ingredients. The school nutrition industry is coming alive, and the funding has been tremendous for our district.”

The Healey Administration has committed $170 million dollars to funding school meals in her fiscal year 2025 budget proposal. However, a great increase in school meal participation means that additional funding will be needed in the final budget from the state legislature. The most recent data from October 2023 shows that on average statewide, in schools not previously offering free school meals through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), nearly 20,000 more children are eating lunch daily and over 18,000 more students are eating breakfast daily when compared to October 2022. That change in just one year means that free school meals are benefiting more students, and we need to increase funding to match the pace of participation. Since 2019, pre-pandemic, over 100,000 more students are participating in free school lunch in non-CEP schools, a 40.8% increase. Project Bread, the leading statewide food security organization in Massachusetts, is working with districts like Plymouth Public Schools to ensure students can access the food they need to thrive and school nutrition departments are equipped for success.

“We applaud Governor Healey for committing $170 million dollars to funding school meals during the 2024-2025 school year,” says Leran Minc, Project Bread’s Assistant Director of Policy. “We now ask that the Legislature pass a budget that fully funds school meals. Ensuring students have the food they need to learn today and the nutrition they need to reach their full potential is a wise investment. Fully funding school meals is fully funding our future.”

Each of the 12 schools in the Plymouth Public Schools district serve breakfast in different ways to meet the needs of each student population. The district has made strategic expansions over the last few years with increased school meal reimbursements, from hiring a school nutritionist to reaping their first harvest of lettuce from the school farm that will be packed into backpacks for some students to take home over the weekend for extra meals.

“Being able to provide free meals for all students has been huge and participation has gone through the roof,” says Van Cott. “There are so many benefits, but a surprising one is that kids are now trying new items and being exposed to new healthy options. They love the food!”

Project Bread works with schools to integrate breakfast into the day and to design and implement a breakfast program that works for each school. As seen in Plymouth, there are several ways this can work. Schools can provide breakfast in the classroom, offer students grab & go meals on their way into class, offer a mid-morning “second chance breakfast” or provide some combination of these models as viable strategies to ensure all students can start the day nourished and ready to learn. Plymouth School District received a grant this year from Project Bread to cover the cost of new breakfast carts to serve grab-and-go meals to increase breakfast participation.

“Many students face transportation obstacles that make arriving early to school difficult, and historically, concern about being singled out or labeled as hungry has deterred some students from eating school breakfast,” says Minc. “Making breakfast part of the school day, serving it after the bell for all students, regardless of their family income, limits stigma and eliminates common participation barriers so all students can access this vital resource. We are so grateful for districts like Plymouth that work hard to ensure children don’t have to worry where their next meal is coming from and can instead focus on learning and just being kids. That is what we’re funding through free school meals, and that it why it’s essential that sufficient funding is allocated in the fiscal year 2025 budget.”