Cape school seeks breakfast waiver

Cape Girardeau Central High School students can't get a hot breakfast at school even with the encouragement of a state law.

The law requires public school districts to offer breakfast to students in all schools in which 35 percent or more of the students are eligible for free and reduced-price meals. Nearly 38 percent of Central's students come from low-income families and qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, officials said.

But districts can opt out of the requirement if their school boards secure a waiver from the state. A waiver doesn't prevent a district from serving breakfast at some or all of its buildings.

The Cape Girardeau school board recently voted to seek a three-year waiver from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. It will mark the district's third such waiver.

DESE can deny the request, but the agency hasn't turned down a request since the first waivers were given in 1993, said Karen Wooton, DESE's director of school food services. "We haven't had any that have not been legitimate reasons," she said.

Summer school students went through the serving line for lunch at Central High School Tuesday. (Fred Lynch)

Lisa Elfrink, food services director for the Cape Girardeau School District, said the 5-year-old high school doesn't have enough kitchen storage space to serve both breakfast and lunch. The district would have to cut back on its lunch offerings in order to have sufficient storage space for breakfast items, she said.

Principal Dr. Mike Cowan said the kitchen space was reduced to cut costs when the school was built. The kitchen has several metal freezers to store food. But it has only one storage room for canned goods. That room is crammed full of large cans of food at the start of each school year, he said.

Elfrink and other officials in the district don't want to cut back on the varied lunch menu in order to add a breakfast program. The kitchen would need to be expanded if the district was to offer breakfast.

The breakfast program was expanded to the junior high school last year. That leaves the high school, which serves about 1,400 lunches a day, as the only school in the district that doesn't serve breakfast, officials said.

"I think eventually we will add it at the high school," Elfrink said.

School board members said they want to know how much added storage space would be needed to offer a breakfast program.

The waiver will allow school officials time to study the issue and the possibility of expanding the high school kitchen, said school board president Steven Trautwein.

"We don't have information on how much it would cost," he said. "We need to have enough information to make a good decision."

Central High School is one of the few public schools in Missouri that doesn't offer breakfast, DESE's Wooton said. "About 95 percent of our public schools participate in the breakfast program," she said.

Al McFerren, who is stepping down as assistant principal at the high school to take a job as high school principal in another school district, hopes that Central High School starts serving breakfast.

"I would love to see them try it," he said.

McFerren said students often tell him that they're hungry when they get to school. "I think it would be utilized," he said of a breakfast program. "We get a lot of early arrivals here."

Students can get cereal in the high school cafeteria or commons area, but they have to pay for it. No hot breakfasts are served, and students can't get free or reduced-price breakfast meals like they can at Cape Girardeau's elementary, middle and junior high schools.

"It is absolutely vital for some of our kids to have access to that meal," McFerren said.

Research shows that students who eat breakfast perform better academically, according to the School Nutrition Association in Alexandria, Va.

Nationwide, it's estimated that 11 percent of children come to school hungry, Central High's Cowan said. That would mean 130 to 140 students at Central come to school hungry each day, he said.

At lunch during summer school this week at Central High School, several students said the district should serve breakfast.

"This is the first school that I have ever been to that didn't have a breakfast program," said Lazarious Thompson, who will be a senior this fall.

LaQuinton Moore, who will be a sophomore this fall, said he would eat breakfast at the high school if it were offered. "I know I need breakfast," he said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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