September 24, 2009
LANSING - Nearly five million more school breakfasts were served to Michigan school children in the first year of State Superintendent Mike Flanagan's Michigan School Breakfast Challenge.
"I am thrilled that so many schools across Michigan participated in this challenge," Flanagan said, "and I'm elated that thousands more children are getting a free and nutritious breakfast to start their school day."
The two-year challenge to public and non-public schools participating in the National School Lunch Program was to increase their school breakfast participation by 50 percent.
In the first year alone, 81 school districts already have met the challenge, with several schools far exceeding that aim. The 45,237,467 school breakfasts served statewide during 2008-09 marked a 12.4 percent increase over the previous year. Flanagan encourages every district to continue its pursuit of the Michigan School Breakfast Challenge goal and help school kids develop healthy lifestyles with a nutritious morning meal.
"A healthy breakfast improves academic achievement, school attendance, and student attentiveness and behavior in the classroom," Flanagan noted. "Every school should be focusing on fostering healthy eating habits by their students. The School Breakfast Challenge is one of the best ways we can do this."
Flanagan launched the Michigan School Breakfast Challenge in May 2008 after learning that the federally-funded free and reduced breakfast program was being underutilized. Statistics showed that while over 140 million free and reduced lunches were being served in Michigan, only 39 million breakfasts were being served.
Flanagan and the Michigan Department of Education partnered with the United Dairy Industry of Michigan (UDIM) to establish the Michigan School Breakfast Challenge. UDIM provided extensive marketing and support materials; equipment for the schools; and the monetary awards for the highest achieving schools in both the first and second years of the challenge.
"I'd really like to thank the United Dairy Industry of Michigan for its outstanding support of the Breakfast Challenge," Flanagan said. "This has been a fantastic public/private partnership that has resulted in some very positive outcomes for Michigan's children."
This year's Gold Award recipients are:
Belding Area School District
Lincoln Park Public Schools
Michigan Technical Academy (Detroit)
Waldron Area Schools
This year's Silver Award recipients are:
Arenac Eastern School District
Cheboygan Area Schools
Manton Consolidated Schools
School District of the City of Royal Oak
Gold Award recipients received a $5,000 cash award and Silver Award recipients received a $2,500 cash award. These top awards recognize those districts that had the highest percentage increases in Average Daily Participation for their School Breakfast Programs. The monetary awards can be used towards wellness activities for the students; future breakfast promotion efforts; physical education programming; and/or school meal improvement.
For a list of the entire Michigan School Breakfast Challenge Honor Roll, and to read the success stories of the award recipients, open the attached pdf or go to: http://www.michigan.gov/mde-breakfast/
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