Breakfast Burritos = Brighter Futures

This site focuses on health care reform and Medicaid, but we should not neglect nutrition’s role in building a healthy, productive state. So today we look westward and salute our colleagues at New Mexico Appleseed, who helped pass a pioneering bill that provides breakfast burritos to some 55,000 elementary school students in that state’s poorest public schools.

But here’s the kicker: Nobody eats till the bell rings and class is underway. This key provision has more than doubled the number of students eating free school breakfasts and the revenue to school nutrition programs.

N.M. educators have enthusiastically embraced the “Breakfast After the Bell” initiative, the country’s first law that allows chow time during class time, and have credited it with improving student attendance, classroom behavior and academic performance. One principal even claims the program  turned her school around.

Check it out in the clip below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZsxxzEAiCU&feature=channel_video_title]

It seems simple enough. Meanwhile, here in South Carolina, where poverty and joblessness are soaring and morale in public schools is low enough to slide under your front door, many of tomorrow’s potential leaders will remain marginalized by hunger.

Our time indeed, Mr. Hand.