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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Commonwealth Lagging in School Breakfasts

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Thursday, January 23, 2014   

BOSTON – Massachusetts does not fare well in a new scorecard showing the scope and reach of free breakfast programs for low-income children in schools nationwide.

The figures released by the Food Research and Action Center show the Commonwealth ranked 48th out of 50 states and Washington, D.C., in the percentage of its schools offering free breakfasts to low-income children. Out of every 100 children served free school lunches, only 43 get breakfast, too.

The scores sting Pat Baker of the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.

"The data's pretty stark," she says. "We haven't improved. So that's frustrating."

In Boston, the breakfast program is considered widely successful, with children allowed to pick up nutritious food from the cafeteria and eat it in the classroom as school begins.

Baker and other anti-hunger activists hope school districts from the rest of the state will wake up to the benefits of the program.

Those benefits, she says, are profound.

"There's ample evidence that children who receive breakfast before they start to study or while they're starting the day do better," Baker explains. "School attendance is better, academic performance is better, kids are healthier."

Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, says the scorecard differences aren't based on large states or small states, but reflect state leaders' enthusiasm, or lack of it, for the breakfast program.

"It's good state law versus mediocre state law," he asserts. "It's leadership – from state child nutrition and education agencies, and superintendents and principals – or a lack of leadership."

Nationwide, the scorecard shows that with 311,000 more children getting breakfast at school than in the previous year, there is significant progress, but more can be done.







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