<p>S atttends early college academy. School levy failed, so they pulled out of public school system to save teachers jobs. Well, now they don't have a breakfast program and lunch is $2.50 for a lunchable (basically). We as parents need suggests on how to provide at least a breakfast program for the kids. Some kids only eat when there is a breakfast/lunch option at school. We need ideas on who to talk to, fundraising, or buying the products ourselves. We just need to know what director to go in. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>How about just telling the kids & their parents that breakfast must be eaten at home? Is that really such a burden, given that a bowl of oatmeal costs pennies & takes one minute to cook? How about a banana & a granola bar to eat on the run? I really hate that our society is encouraging dependency & feebleness.</p>
<p>I guess Im thinking about those kids who don’t may not have a few pennies. The school has only 247 students and sometimes a helping hand is needed. Anybody else have suggestions? Or maybe I’ve come to the wrong place :(</p>
<p>StickerShock - It’s not necessarily dependency & feebleness. Some people’s parents just don’t feed them. Plain and simple. They expect the school to have the food to feed them because the parents just don’t have the time, money, or don’t care enough. It’s not the kids’ fault. </p>
<p>With that said, maybe if you get a big group of parents together, you could fundraise, buy breakfast products with that and then charge whatever the school used to charge for a breakfast. That way, you have an income coming in so you’ll only have to fundraise to get the program off the ground. Get a few kids involved. I’m sure they’d love to help and it’ll look great on their college apps, if nothing else.</p>
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THis is a perfect definition of dependency & feebleness. Igonoring one’s responsibilities because someone else will shoulder them.</p>
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I’m gagging…</p>
<p>Buckeye, if you care about a few kids w/o $$, although the idea that anyone of those 247 kids is unable to get his hands on a box of oatmeal is kind of farfetched, then why not just discreetly provide the kid with some breakfast supplies? Why is a a big program needed? Oh, right…it makes for a good college EC. Or bragging rights.</p>
<p>buckeye:</p>
<p>Do you know how many kids are involved? Perhaps you and other parents can come up with a budget of sorts then go out to do fundraising. Would the local supermarkets be willing to contribute milk and cereals or muffins? Can the kids do some fundraising activities such as car washing, babysitting, doing errands, that would yield some income?</p>
<p>also even if they have food @ home- I can’t eat myself first thing in the morning- it is too friggin early.</p>
<p>I would include some protein- as well as sugar and carbs
hardboiled eggs- steamed tofu ( comes in packages) - split pea spread- peanut butter & graham crackers-</p>
<p>The teachers may also have experience with at least knowing what groups have contributed in the past? Often if some of the kids come and present their need to a charity, it goes over better than adults asking.</p>
<p>Sticker-it never hurts to help others and that’s what Im trying to do. I appreciate these suggestions and stay open to receive others, so keep them coming.</p>
<p>I think what your doing is great. Back when my youngest was in 1st grade she had a set of twins who would come to school hungry. I would work in the classroom and she would ask me at recess time if I had something for her to eat. I talked with the principal and some parents made an arrangement to have granola bars and juice boxes on hand in the office. The teachers then could privately send the kids who needed it to the office.
What we do at my D’s private middle school is have a free food program at snack time. The school accepts private donations from parents and they purchase milk and cups, peanut butter and crackers. Then parents sign up to bring once a month or week if they want to bring cut up fruits and vegetables.
Another idea is to contact the local food bank and ask for suggestions. Also our local newpaper each sunday has a section about volunteer opportunities in the community. Organizations can put requests for specific items or ongoing needs or special events such as fundraisers.</p>
<p>How about ask the teachers to incorporate the whole idea of breakfast into their lesson plans. Teach them about breakfast nutrition, make grocery lists, have cooking class (measuring, math, science). At the end of the unit, give all the kids a “breakfast bag” - including a box of oatmeal, jar of PB, etc. - just a few hearty items and then make part of the lesson recording what they do (make) with the bag for breakfast when they come home. Most kids even elementary age are capable of making some breakfast for themselves. If the parents don’t take the responsibility, put it in the hands of the kids. </p>
<p>I bet if you put together a proposal, you could get donations from your local grocery stores.</p>
<p>I would have fired the teachers and kept the breakfasts. What teachers do with kids who have an empty stomach is pretty irrelevant.</p>
<p>Yes, buckeye, helping others can be a good thing. But you don’t need a big program. I suggested in an earlier post that you “just discreetly provide the kid with some breakfast supplies.” It works for mom60 at her school. A program, once implemented, conveys the idea that it is normal to be unable to provide breakfast for your kids. It creates dependency & kills personal initiative. It is much more charitable to quietly, without fanfare, give a hungry kid food. A bowl of Quakler oatmeal costs 13 cents. A granola bar is a quarter.</p>
<p>Abasket: I’d be really annoyed if my son’s 6th grade class apent a chunk of instructional time every morning on making breakfast!!! Sounds more like a pre-K project to me.</p>
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Yup. And for 25 cents, that student will be able to learn & concentrate. And no teacher would have to lose his job.</p>
<p>Sticker, we don’t really know this community, do we? If 2 kids out of a class of 25 come to school hungry, it’s possible to discretely send them to the principal’s office for breakfast without making a big deal out of it. If the community is such that half the kids are affluent and half on free lunch, sending half the kids out of the class becomes a very obvious and not very kind way of making sure that everyone has been fed.</p>
<p>In some communities every kid gets a “swipe card” for the cafeteria. The kids who get the subsidies get their cards reloaded at no cost (or moderate cost) to the family, courtesy of the federal government and your tax dollars. The kids who don’t get subsidized pay to reload their cards. However, in the lunch line, everyone pays by swiping their card. I think this is a better solution than stigmatizing kids who already are dealing with nutritional issues, not enough (or the right kind) of food at home, etc.</p>
<p>I agree with you philosophically that creating dependency is, on a societal level, a never ending black hole. However, if your kid were sitting in a classroom with a bunch of kids who didn’t eat breakfast on a regular basis, whether through parental neglect or whatever, how would your kid feel? How do those kids feel and how can they possibly learn if they are chronically hungry in the morning? I’m all for quietly giving a kid a bowl of oatmeal… but you can find a way to fix this problem without making kids feel even worse about a sub-optimal family situation.</p>
<p>Blossom, a breakfast program is one more chunk of time taken away from instruction. There are already too many parental responsibilities that the schools are assuming. Instructional time is shrinking.</p>
<p>– Starbuck’s – I’m not kidding. Our local Starbuck’s is very generous, supplying muffins & coffee to our neighboring elementary whenever it’s requested (i.e., PTA meetings, school functions etc.) Obviously you won’t need coffee, but if you specify the donation is for children, Starbuck’s may be able to help. </p>
<p>– Grocery stores – our local (chain) supermarket is very helpful. Talk directly to the manager. </p>
<p>– A large Girl Scout troup – DD and her GS friends would cook/serve dinner at local Ronald McDonald’s house as part of their effort to earn badges & awards. You could request the same be done at your school.</p>
<p>These are SHORT-TERM solutions – each may buy you a couple of weeks to do some more extensive fundraising/soliciting requests. </p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>First of all, I think some posters need to …settle down…</p>
<p>I didn’t mean spend every morning making breakfast - but you have to do health, science, math etc. anyway. Spend a couple of weeks highlighting the importance of breakfast via your health, math, science lesson - that’s all! Give the kids the tools to be able to help themselves. Saying it’s the parents responsibility is great - but how are you going to MAKE THEM do it. It can’t happen. </p>
<p>I’m not condoning doing the grocery shopping weekly for these families. Do we know if they have money? No. Do we know if they have transportation? No. Do we know if the parents themselves eat breakfast? No. Do we know that breakfast is important to the learning process at school - YES. </p>
<p>While it may not be the biggest school problem to deal with, I applaud the OP for trying to help solve the problem.</p>
<p>“Yup. And for 25 cents, that student will be able to learn & concentrate. And no teacher would have to lose his job.”</p>
<p>Well, the school is the one that said they’d have to fire the teachers, not I. </p>
<p>Hey, we all make it seem like a big deal around here that kids should go to good schools because they’ll have good peers with big SAT scores. Well, if that’s true for 18-year-olds, it’s probably even more true for 7-year-olds. </p>
<p>Not eating breakfast will definitely ■■■■■■ average SAT scores, and your breakfast-eating kid will suffer for it.</p>
<p>I will talk with take the suggestions from all those who said to speak with companies, grocery stores, writing a proposals, etc. We want to get food items teenagers will eat, not spend our money or other’s money on food items (I have to tell you, I HATE OATMEAL and no matter of starvation is going to make me eat it) that will not be eaten. I know help is out there, I just needed a start for the groundwork. We are going to do something!!!</p>
<p>Sticker, agree 100%. However, given the amount of time the public schools have happily given over to “conflict resolution strategies”, PC Speech lessons, how to wear a condom, No Means No, explaining the zero tolerance for violence policies, why Heather has two Mommies and we should embrace her for it, and my favorite, “everyone here is a winner”; in the grand scheme of things, let’s dump the feel good I’m OK you’re OK junk and just feed the damn breakfast and get on with learning.</p>