Family & Community Students & Families Student Support, Career & Education
Nutrition, Health and Safety

Child Nutrition Outreach Program Report

September l999

School Breakfast Program Outreach

Overview

As described in the workplan for Fiscal Year 2000, the school breakfast outreach this year keys off of Commissioner Driscoll's Superintendents' School Breakfast Campaign. Outreach's primary goal in this year's work is to help define and support the School Breakfast Program in each of the eight school systems - the "lead" communities --tapped by the Commissioner. The goal in these communities is to have demonstrable changes in school breakfast participation and to provide a range of models for other schools and communities. The eight lead communities are: Boston, Chicopee, Lawrence, Orange, Quincy, Revere, Springfield, Taunton.

In addition, Outreach will support, in varying degrees, the 31 other communities throughout the state that have the highest percentages of students eligible for free and reduced-price meals. Outreach will work with food service directors and principals who are interested in developing their School Breakfast Programs. These communities are:

Barnstable
Brockton
Cambridge
Chelsea
Easthampton
Everett
Fall River
Fitchburg
Framingham
Gill-Montague
Gloucester
Greenfield
Haverhill
Holyoke
Lowell
Lynn
Malden
Metheun
New Bedford
North Adams
Pittsfield
Plymouth
Salem
Somerville
Southbridge
Waltham
Wareham
Ware
Westfield
Woburn
Worcester

Outreach will also offer support to any community that successfully applies for school breakfast grants.

During September, Outreach helped each of the lead communities complete work on their yearlong "calendar" for school breakfast activities. Each of these communities is incorporating the 800 books donated by Project Bread into their breakfast programs.

Work in both the lead communities and the targeted communities centered this month on communicating the availability of the school breakfast grants. This work focused on connecting with food service directors to make sure that they knew about the grants and included responding to questions and providing the needed grant materials in order to meet the end of September deadline.

Statewide school breakfast promotion included several efforts. The Department of Transitional Assistance has agreed to mail an insert to all their clients with children in October. This will follow the August mailing done by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to all DTA clients, underscoring the availability of school breakfast programs. The insert will list Project Bread's FoodSource Hotline as a resource for parents to find out more about school breakfast.

The Hotline's inclusion of school breakfast information in their referrals began this month. In September, the Hotline began systematically raising the issue of school breakfast as an available resource to all callers with children. Outreach has developed follow up materials for these calls, including a postcard noting the number of the child's school if it has a school breakfast program. These materials are in place to respond to the DTA October mailing.

Outreach continued its efforts to connect with parents by providing information about school breakfast to agencies that serve low-income families. This effort has been a regular part of the outreach for the Summer Food Service Program, and now is being developed for the School Breakfast Program as well. Outreach has developed a school breakfast poster that can be adapted to show the schools that are serving breakfast within a geographic area. This mailing, planned for about 300 agencies across the state, will be completed in October.

Outreach has also developed materials for its outreach to parents with childcare vouchers. This material -- an insert for mailings, a "prescription" pad for distribution and flyers for posting -- focuses on the connection between school breakfast and success in school. Commitments to distribute this material to childcare voucher parents have already been made by providers in Boston, Lawrence, Worcester and Cambridge.

Lead Communities

Outreach maintained contact with food service directors in Orange, Lawrence and Revere. Work included brainstorming grant ideas and planning for the book distribution. More detailed planning meetings were scheduled for October.

Boston
Outreach in Boston for September involved working with Director of Nutrition Education Deborah Korzec-Ramirez to plan and host a kick-off meeting for all Boston breakfast coordinators. The meeting was held at the end of September and included an opportunity for group brainstorming and the sharing of materials used around the state for breakfast promotion.

Chicopee
Outreach worked with Food Services Director Joanne Lennon to plan her School Breakfast grant application in September. To assist with the implementation of Joanne's breakfast/literacy promotion, Outreach contacted the Boston Public Library and Read Boston for help developing possible models that could link books and School Breakfast.

Quincy
Food Service Director Joanne Morrissey is planning to focus on middle school promotion and full utilization of the breakfast coordinator model. In September, Outreach met with Joanne to plan initiatives for the year and to draft a memo from Joanne and the superintendent to all Quincy principals. The memo informed them of the Commissioner's School Breakfast Campaign and of ways in which each principal can help to support their breakfast program. Joanne and Outreach staff also planned a city-wide Breakfast Coordinator meeting for the end of October. With grant funding, Joanne hopes to have breakfast coordinators in more than 10 Quincy Schools and to open an a la carte breakfast program at Quincy's second high school, which does not currently offer breakfast.

Springfield
Outreach worked with Tom Mazza and Ella Holeman to begin implementation of their breakfast campaign. The focus of the work for September was around "Books at Breakfast." Springfield Volunteer Coordinator Maria DeAngelis is helping to determine the schools at which the books will be distributed. In addition, Outreach sent breakfast placemats for the students at the Milton Bradley Breakfast Cluster Stop to color during breakfast.

Taunton
Outreach in Taunton in September has focused on working with Food Service Director Bob Viera on the implementation of a breakfast program at the high school. Although the principal has raised a number of concerns regarding the logistics of the program, Bob has worked closely with Superintendent Gerald Croteau to smooth out the details. A breakfast coordinator has been appointed and Outreach has met with her to explore promotional opportunities. Bob and Outreach have also been working with the Galligan Elementary School to explore the possibility of offering Universal Breakfast there and appointing a breakfast coordinator to oversee the program. Bob will be applying for grant funding for both breakfast coordinator positions as well as for a professionally designed School Breakfast promotional display to bring to schools for on parent nights; in the meantime, Outreach worked with Bob to create a temporary display to use for September opportunities.

Targeted Communities

Brockton

• Attending a meeting of all parent liaisons, a 20-hour-per-week position in all Brockton elementary schools. At the meeting, Outreach shared information about the School Breakfast Program, easy opportunities for parent liaisons to promote the program, and supporting materials.
• Working with the Brockton Public Schools on a cable television special on the School Breakfast Program. The show included footage of school breakfast and interviews with students, the parent liaison director, and an Outreach staff member.
• Meeting with Colleen Roberts, the new parent liaison and breakfast coordinator at the Arnone School, who will be administering the pilot partnership with the Rotary Club. Outreach staff and Colleen met with Rotary member Sandy Wixted, who has arranged for the Rotary sponsorship. Rotary is providing a School Breakfast promotional budget of at least $1,000 to support the program and may also be interested in providing some sort of support from Rotary members. Outreach shared a collection of materials and ideas with Colleen and has arranged to follow up once Colleen has developed a tentative promotional campaign.
• Sharing materials and breakfast outreach information with the Brockton Hunger Network, including the new promotional posters and mailing inserts.

Fall River
Outeach in Fall River involved working closely with Food Service Director Bob Dempsey to support his development of a School Breakfast Demonstration Grant proposal. Outreach met with Bob and his assistant director and helped to draft a proposal for breakfast coordinators and promotional budgets for three Fall River elementary schools.

Fitchburg
Outreach worked with Food Service Director Kristin Morello to brainstorm ideas for promoting the breakfast program and increasing participation. Outreach drafted a press release to highlight

The "Breakfast Book Club" that began last year. Kristin is met with principals this month and is going to implement classroom feeding and universal breakfast at five elementary schools. Outreach will meet with Kristin next month.

New Bedford
Outreach worked with Food Service Director Nancy Carvahlo to develop Breakfast Clubs at two New Bedford schools and to explore the possibility of Universal Breakfast and classroom feeding at the Phillips Avenue Elementary School. Outreach and Nancy met with Carney Academy's cafeteria manger to design a Breakfast Club that accommodates the school's large population, small staff, and limited budget, and supplied materials to support the club's introduction at Carney and at Hayden-McFadden School. In October, Nancy and Outreach will meet with Phillips Ave. Principal Leo L'Homme to discuss the details of Universal Breakfast and classroom feeding

Somerville
In September, Outreach met with Somerville's Director of Student Services, Dr. Steven Jenkins, and Food Service Director Henry Biagi to discuss the School Breakfast Program and opportunities for system-wide support. Dr. Jenkins agreed to share information about the importance of the breakfast program and promotional materials with all Somerville principals at his October principals meeting as well as to inform them of the availability of the Child Nutrition Outreach Program. Outreach also arranged to meet with the director of Somerville's Parent Information Center, Sarah Slive, in early October to explore other opportunities to communicate with parents.

Woburn

Worcester
Outreach sent materials to Emily Smith, food service director, to begin promotion for the book campaign. Emily is continuing to work with Dr. Linda Sagor to promote the breakfast program among parents, students, teachers and principals. Outreach drafted a press release to highlight the increases in the breakfast program participation last year.

Outreach maintained contact with the following communities and informed them about the availability of breakfast grants.

Chelsea
Easthampton
Framingham
Gloucester
Haverhill
Lynn
Malden
Salem
Waltham
Ware

OTHER COMMUNITIES

Dracut
Outreach brainstormed breakfast promotional ideas with Tracy Crowley, health coordinator in Dracut. Tracy is interested in working on a breakfast campaign this year.

Essex Agricultural
Outreach followed up with Maureen Oulton regarding breakfast start-up. Maureen stated that they are still working out logistics and are not yet ready to start the program.

Salisbury
Outreach provided 800 parent brochures to be distributed to parents through Pettingill House. This opportunity grew out of contact with Pettingill House through Project Bread's hungrt network and through the Department of Public Health's regional Prevention Center.

Outreach spoke with food service directors in the following communities to provide them with information about the grants as well as Jump Start kits:

Lee
Leicester
Norton
Salisbury
Shrewsbury
South Berkshire Regional School District
Sunderland

SUMMER FOOD SERVICE PROGRAM OUTREACH

Overview

The wrap up for this year's Summer Food Service Program has begun by sending SFSP evaluations to all sponsors. A final report on these evaluations will be completed in October; a copy of the survey is included with this report.

Outreach was successful in getting the Massachusetts Parks and Recreation Association to agree to run an article in both their September and January newsletters about the SFSP. The September article made a pitch for the SFSP as a resource for existing children's programs that serve low-income communities.

Other Work/Issues

Universal Breakfast Research
Student and parent interviews at the Sarah Greenwood, Haley and Cleveland got underway in September. The goal is to interview 100 parents and 100 students in the three schools. These interviews will form the baseline for the universal breakfast study being conducted by Mass General Hospital researchers for Project Bread.

MCHI

Outreach to parents in Quincy and Revere was the next step in the work to complete focus group interviews for the public education campaign in support of school breakfast. Superintendents Creedon and Tye graciously agreed to distribute flyers asking for parents to share their insights about school breakfast programs in their children's schools.

Both the parent and student interviews will be conducted in October by the advertising firm of Hill, Holiday as part of their work on this media campaign.

Outreach to Health Centers

Funding through the federal grant to support the outreach to health centers to promote child nutrition programs has been approved. A staff person to implement this outreach has been selected and she will begin work in Worcester and Boston health centers in October.

This proposal grew out of efforts to identify venues to reach parents about both the School Breakfast and Summer Food Service Programs. The outreach funded by the federal grant will build on the work done this past summer in health centers in Cambridge and Somerville.