More students getting free breakfasts
WASHINGTON - In the USA, students from low-income families are eating more free and reduced-price breakfasts at school, an anti-hunger group said Thursday.
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The federal breakfast program feeds only two in five who need it. Still, it reached a record 7.7 million low-income children in the 2005-2006 school year, according to a report from the Food Research and Action Center.
New Mexico posted the biggest increase, with 58 children getting breakfast for every 100 getting free and reduced-price lunches, up from 53 a year earlier. State officials there spent nearly half a million dollars to boost breakfast participation in schools struggling to meet standards under President Bush’s No Child Left Behind program.
Louisiana saw a big drop -nearly 12 percent- because of Hurricane Katrina. More than three-quarters of the 31,000 students who left the school system were eligible for free and reduced-price meals.
Run by the Agriculture Department, the breakfast program reimburses schools for providing meals to kids. Breakfasts are free for about 72 percent of the children; 9 percent pay 30 cents per meal and 19 percent pay about $1 per meal.
The report came from Agriculture Department data and a survey of state nutrition officials. (World)
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