RALEIGH, N.C. — Governor Roy Cooper announced that he is directing $1.4 million in federal funding to help schools expand school breakfast programs.
The funds will be used to provide grants to school districts and charter schools to assist with implementing innovative school breakfast models to expand student participation in school breakfast.
Cooper is partnering with the North Carolina Alliance for Health (NCAH) and the Carolina Hunger Initiative (CHI) on the program. He made the announcement Tuesday at Glenn Elementary School in Durham where he served students breakfast in their classroom and spoke with teachers and cafeteria staff.
"A child who is hungry can't learn and many children can't or won't eat when they have to get up so early," Cooper said. "Innovative efforts that get breakfast to children in the classroom are proven to encourage them to eat which will improve their educational success."
NCAH and CHI will use the funds to administer a competitive grant program that will provide grants of up to $50,000 per school nutrition program to assist in implementing innovative school breakfast models, such as Breakfast in the Classroom, Second Chance Breakfast, and Grab and Go Breakfast.
"We can all agree that no child should go hungry, and we all benefit when every child has access to the nutrition, they need to reach their full potential," Executive Director of NCAH Morgan Wittman Gramann said.
These innovative school breakfast models have been shown to increase school breakfast participation, especially among students who qualify for free-or-reduced-price lunch. The more than 600 schools that are offering free school breakfast and lunch to all students for the first time during the 2023-24 school year through the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program will be given priority for the grants.
The CEP program subsidizes free meals for all students in schools with high percentages of low-income and at-risk students. NCAH and CHI will also be providing technical assistance to grant recipients focused on effective ways to implement school breakfast programs.
Funding for this initiative is from federal Emergency Assistance for Non-Public Schools (EANS) funds that have reverted to the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) fund.
For the latest information on this grant program, please visit CarolinaHungerInitiative.org.
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