All Pa. public school students will get free breakfast, but some districts struggle with low participation

All 1.7 million of Pennsylvania’s public school students will receive free breakfast each day this school year, as part of a state program.

Gov. Josh Shapiro championed the initiative, which was included in the state budget he signed earlier this month and will cost $46.5 million.

“As I’ve traveled Pennsylvania over the past few years, one thing I heard over and over again is about how many kids come to school hungry,” Shapiro said at a news conference. “Every expert will tell you that you can’t learn on an empty stomach — and we cannot expect kids to learn math and science and English when they haven’t eaten anything all day.”

The program’s rollout, however, comes as schools in the region and nationwide struggle with encouraging students to participate in free breakfast programs. In Philadelphia, for example, breakfast was already offered to all students and less than a quarter of them took the meal every day last school year.

All students in Pennsylvania’s high-poverty school districts — where 40% of the student population is under the federal poverty line — were previously eligible to receive free breakfast, free lunch, and free dinner as part of a federal school meals program.

Students in the School District of Philadelphia have received these meals since 2014. But the district has struggled to increase breakfast participation since students returned to classrooms after COVID-19 closures, said spokesperson Marissa Orbanek.

Last year, Philadelphia served 6.3 million breakfasts, Orbanek said. This amounts to approximately 35,000 breakfasts served, or 20% of students eating daily school breakfast.

Norristown Area School District Superintendent Christopher Dormer said he hopes the statewide attention on free breakfasts will help increase participation.

“Every little bit helps in terms of making sure that students know, ‘Hey, there’s free breakfast available every day,’” Dormer said. “It’s so important that kids start their day with their brains fueled and their bellies full so they can focus on learning.”

Norristown, which also already offered free meals, spent the last few years working to increase participation in the breakfast program. Since shifting to serving breakfast in a student’s homeroom or classroom instead of in the cafeteria before school begins, participation increased from about 10% to 61% over the last few years, Dormer said.

Starting in 2020, all Pennsylvania students were eligible for free breakfast and lunch through a federal program. When that expired last September, former Gov. Tom Wolf used leftover funds to extend it another year. Shapiro then pitched the state-funded free breakfast program.

Students at Norristown Area High School will have assorted granola bars with craisins for their first day on Monday, while Cheltenham’s Myers Elementary School will serve strawberry mini bagels, according to menus provided by the districts. Students at James Logan Elementary School in Philadelphia, meanwhile, will eat raspberry yogurt and graham crackers on their first day next week.

Rep. Manuel Guzman (D., Berks) said during a news conference at the Reading School District that free breakfast will improve educational outcomes.

“I was one of those kids who came to school hungry, was in class hungry, and I wondered where I was going to get my next meal,” Guzman said. “We don’t need any more generations of Manny Guzmans to go hungry in the Reading School District. And now because of this General Assembly and this governor, that will never happen again.”

In addition to breakfast, approximately 22,000 students who are eligible for reduced lunch will now receive free lunch as part of Shapiro’s initiative. Students will not need to apply to receive a free breakfast each day.

Dormer said he thinks increased free breakfast participation — in addition to new academic curriculum and materials — has helped improve student academic performance in Norristown.

“When kids are fed and can really focus on learning,” he said, “they are absolutely going to do better.”