For every 100 Mountain State students who received free or reduced-price lunch last school year, about 82 received free or reduced-price breakfast, according to an annual scorecard that ranks West Virginia No. 1 in the United States for breakfast participation for the second consecutive year.
West Virginia's breakfast participation ratio in the 2014-15 academic year saw an increase of nine students per 100 from the previous school year, according to the Food Research and Action Center's latest School Breakfast Scorecard, which was released Tuesday.
West Virginia's participation ratio in the federally funded breakfast program is far above the 71 students per 100 ratio in New Mexico, the state with the next-highest level of breakfast participation, according to the scorecard. New Mexico also was No. 2 the previous school year, when it was at 72 students per 100.
National breakfast participation increased overall but much slower than in West Virginia, rising in the 2014-15 school year to 54 students receiving free and reduced-price breakfast per 100 receiving free and reduced-price lunch, up from 53 students per 100 in the previous school year.
The report says West Virginia already was above the current national ratio five years ago, at 56 per 100. As of last school year, roughly 107,000 Mountain State students received free or reduced-price breakfast.
The breakfast-to-lunch participation ratio increased despite the total number of Mountain State students receiving free or reduced-price lunch rising, from 127,000 to 130,000, from 2013-14 to 2014-15.
The Food Research and Action Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, credited the rapid rise in local breakfast participation to state lawmakers' passage of the 2013 Feed to Achieve Act. Among other things, the legislation requires all schools to allow students to eat breakfast during the first 10 to 15 minutes of school, after first period or from "grab-and-go" prepackaged bags - or some combination of those three strategies.
The report also credited "strong state leadership" and "wide usage" of the Community Eligibility Provision. The national program allows entire schools or whole school districts to receive federal reimbursements to serve free meals to all students, needy or not, if at least 40 percent of their students are deemed eligible for free meals. Students are deemed eligible if they are homeless, fostered, migrant, enrolled in Head Start or their families receive other government benefits.
West Virginia began participating in the program in the 2012-13 school year, although the report says it wasn't until last school year that the program was "available to eligible schools in all states and take up of the provision was widespread."
"We really didn't pilot it; we implemented it, right out of the chute," said Rick Goff, executive director of West Virginia's Office of Child Nutrition.
Goff said hungry children are harder to educate. The report says the Community Eligibility Provision can result in significant administrative savings while serving more students.
"The disturbing thing to me is, we have counties that are eligible to participate in that provision, that don't," Goff said.
According to his information, there are 19 counties offering free meals across their school systems, but eight - including Monongalia, Putnam, and Roane - have eligible schools and have declined to participate. He said counties still might have to deal with some local cost increases if they opt into the program but that the biggest issue is some county school board members' belief that, if a family can afford to pay for a meal, it should.
The report said the Community Eligibility Provision has significantly increased breakfast participation among low-income kids, and the more than 14,000 schools participating in 2014-15 have grown to 17,000 schools this academic year. The report says that, last school year, West Virginia had 475 schools eligible for the Community Eligibility Provision, and 369, or 78 percent, took part.
The Food Research and Action Center said it compares the number of students on free and reduced-price breakfast to free and reduced-price lunch because, across states, there's broad participation by low-income students in the lunch program.
Nationally, 44 states increased their free and reduced-price breakfast participation rate last school year, meaning about 11.7 million low-income children took part. That's an increase of half a million from last school year and 4 million from a decade ago.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.