Inside AASA: Kayla Jackson on Alternative School Breakfast

Inside AASA

As public schools today address societal issues with ever-greater regularity, AASA is finding its work supporting school-age children tied directly to alleviating hunger.

The AASA alternative school breakfast initiative, directed by Kayla Jackson (who assumed the reins in August from Kelly Beckwith), has been funded by the Walmart Foundation since 2011. Its goal is to remove the stigma around school breakfast by making the meal more accessible and convenient for all students, in turn raising participation and reducing the hunger that can interfere with their learning. The participating districts nationwide range in size from 1,500 to 400,000 students.

The following is the full transcript of AASA staffer Rebecca Shaw's interview with Beckwith.

What’s the primary goal of AASA’s Alternative School Breakfast initiative? 

The goal of the alternative breakfast initiative at AASA, which is funded by the Walmart Foundation, is to increase the number of children participating in the school breakfast program. By making breakfast more accessible through serving the meal in more convenient places, like in elementary school classrooms, it removes the stigma of the poor child having to go to the cafeteria for a free meal. In middle and high schools, breakfast is served off of a kiosk or even in a vending machine specifically made for school meals. We believe that we are reducing hunger by making breakfast more accessible to all students. 

What have you seen happening in the participating districts in your role overseeing the initiative for AASA? 

I see many things. Superintendents are more aware of and invested in the school meals program as a result of working with AASA on this initiative. When I go on site visits, I see a more familial atmosphere in the classrooms. Teachers who didn’t think they would like breakfast served in the classroom now don’t want to be without it – one teacher told me that she’d be “devastated” if it were taken away. It just starts the day off on the right foot. Some teachers have puzzles and thinking games on the screen for students to do while eating their breakfasts. Other teachers play music. In the upper grades, I’ve seen students working in their workbooks or reading a book. It really depends on the teacher, but I’ve never heard anyone say that breakfast in the classroom creates more disruption to the school day – more than likely, it reduces morning disruptions. 

How have your past experiences here at AASA or previously informed and guided this work? 

When I was just out of college, I worked at a soup kitchen for two years and saw hunger at its most basic level. I never thought about hunger being an issue in schools until I started working on school breakfast here at AASA five years ago – I just didn’t think about it. In all honesty, I didn’t even realize breakfast was served at school until I started working at AASA. The school district I grew up in didn’t offer it. So now I think it is nice to connect to my past work to my current work – hunger and education. 

How does AASA as an organization benefit from concentrated attention on raising the caliber of total-child initiatives?

I hope that this work and all of the work of the Children’s Programs department is seen by our members as a true member benefit and one that positively impacts young people. Our work is about equity, and more often we see public schools having to address societal issues far outside of education. Fortunately, and unfortunately schools are community hubs and everyone wants to address their concern within the school. The school breakfast initiative addresses hunger, which impacts education. 

Why should school system leaders, particularly superintendents, be invested in increasing school breakfast participation?  

There is a connection between hunger and learning. On site visits, we hear this all the time: Why would a superintendent or principal want school breakfast to be served to all children before state testing, but not every day? We hope to raise awareness of the connection that a simple school breakfast has the power to truly impact the education and lives of students. There are many reasons why a child might be hungry when he or she gets to school. Perhaps their family doesn’t have enough money for food, or maybe the student wakes up late and doesn’t have time for breakfast at home. When breakfast is served in the cafeteria only, students who arrive late to school won’t have time to grab a breakfast. So when breakfast is more widely accessible to students, the barriers to learning around hunger, tummy aches, and distractions before lunch are lessened. It really does come back to better attendance and ensuring that students are ready to learn when instruction begins. 

How does alternative school breakfast differ from traditional school breakfast in the cafeteria? What are some examples of these programs that school districts have implemented?

It differs in that it is accessible to more students and meets them where they are. I’ve been talking a lot about breakfast in the classroom at the elementary level, but in middle and high schools there are great opportunities for students to grab a breakfast and go straight to class. In Liberty County, Georgia, they got kiosks for each of their high schools. Each kiosk has a design on it that students had input on. The kiosks are placed in front of the main doors where the students enter, and it’s so easy for a student to grab a hot or cold breakfast and go on their way. We talked to the principal of one of the high schools who said he envisioned the kiosks to be a nightmare, but was willing to give it a try. That school went from serving 15% of their student’s breakfast to, last I checked, 43% of the students. The day I was there, we saw very little trash lying around from breakfast. Plus, there was no chaos in the cafeteria. Not a nightmare scenario at all.

Representatives from statewide community organizations focused on anti-hunger and dairy serve as mentors for participating school districts. Why did you decide to involve mentors at the state level?  What sort of impact have these mentors had in this initiative?

When we began researching and talking to people about alternative school breakfast, we knew we needed on-the-ground support for the districts we would work with. We were new to school breakfast, too, and we aren’t there to be on-site regularly. This provided the perfect opportunity to establish relationships with anti-hunger agencies and local Dairy Councils. They both have the opportunity see school breakfast in many districts, so once we had districts to work with, we established relationships and connected the districts to the mentors. 

We’ve worked with six districts in New York State and have a great presence on school breakfast there. The anti-hunger agency Hunger Solutions New York has not only been on-site to all six of our grantee districts to provide immediate feedback on the breakfast program, but they’ve supported the districts in many other ways as well. They have provided information and technical support around the Community Eligibility Program, summer meals, etc. They also hold advocacy days around funding the school meal program, and have asked our breakfast district superintendents to speak at these events. Another success in NY with our mentor is the relationship they established with the New York Council of School Superintendents. Building relationships is so vital to this work. 

A major component of this initiative is bringing the school districts together through a Community of Practice once a year. In the context of this initiative, what’s the purpose of the Community of Practice?

I always say that a Community of Practice is “more than a meeting.” It’s a place where the districts can come together and share in their successes and find solutions to their challenges. It’s a place where they realize they are not alone in their struggles… with how to get high schoolers to take a free breakfast, to sharing smoothie recipe, to best practices for breakfast in the classroom. We encourage relationships to develop between our current grantees and our former grantees – people who have been there, done that. We encourage superintendents to share about their leadership role in implementing a district-wide alternative school breakfast program. We have both in-person and phone meetings for the sharing to be ongoing.

How has the Community of Practice evolved since the alternative school breakfast initiative first began five years ago, in 2011? 

The best part of the Community of Practice is how it’s grown over the years. We started out with 4 districts. We now have 22 districts – that’s a lot of institutional knowledge. So now when someone has a question, I know someone with the answer. I couldn’t say that as confidently in 2011 when we first began.

How do you know if the project is having the desired effect on its participants?

We monitor monthly progress of school breakfast participation. If we see a number starting to trend downward, we will ask the food service director what’s happening in that school, or we might even make a site visit to the school to see what the issue might be, to talk to the principal, teachers, and even students. We’ve also conducted focus groups with all of the key stakeholders – we hear what they think of the program. In well-implemented programs, participation explodes and nearly everyone is happy with the results. 

Since 2011, AASA has been funded by the Walmart Foundation to provide funding and technical assistance to school districts to increase School Breakfast participation. What sort of technical assistance does AASA offer? 

Connection to mentors and past districts, monthly calls, in-person meetings, and anything else they might ask of us. We are here for any requests a district might make. 

In what ways are school districts able to sustain their work in alternative school breakfast, after their work with AASA is completed?  

The funding we provide to districts is to be used only for infrastructure – we don’t buy food or pay for salaries. We want the districts to have everything they need to run the program successfully even after they are no longer working with AASA. This includes the bags to deliver breakfast to the classroom, vending machines, software updates for mobile payments, shelving units, walk-in freezers, refrigerated delivery trucks… ANYTHING they need that helps them get breakfast to more students. That’s also why we require them to have a School Breakfast Team that meets regularly and which includes the superintendent. The superintendent needs to know what’s happening so he or she can take the lead when needed (and then get out of the way the rest of the time). We have seen that once a program is in place and benefiting students, the key stakeholder support remains. Everyone sees the benefit of the program. The food service department gets more reimbursement due to higher participation levels… Parents have one less worry in the morning… Teachers don’t have to buy food to keep on hand for hungry students… Superintendents and principals see more students arriving to school on time every morning… The list just goes on and on, and the programs can be sustained forever, I hope.