The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“SENSE OF HOUSE REGARDING NATIONAL SCHOOL BREAKFAST PROGRAM” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E601 on March 10, 2009.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
SENSE OF HOUSE REGARDING NATIONAL SCHOOL BREAKFAST PROGRAM
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speech of
HON. SHEILA JACKSON-LEE
of texas
in the house of representatives
Monday, March 9, 2009
Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 210 seeks to express the sense of the House of Representatives that providing breakfast in schools through the National School Breakfast Program has a positive impact on classroom performance. I salute my colleague, Rep. Moore from Wisconsin, in her efforts to promote the National School Breakfast Program, and to recognize the positive impact that it has on our students. I urge my colleagues to support this important resolution.
It has often been said that the children are our future. As Members of Congress and adults, we must do all that we can to provide their well-being, safety, and excellence in school.
A former U.S. Surgeon General once articulated, ``This is expensive stupidity . . . trying to educate children with half starved bodies.'' While educators, parents and policymakers generally agree that children need breakfast in order to learn, function and grow, the nation still has a ways to go to insure that all needy and at-risk children receive a daily school breakfast. While nearly 100,000 individual schools across the country offer a school lunch, more than 15,000 of them still do not make breakfast available to children who are in need. In some states, only 50-60% of the schools serving students lunch also provide them with a breakfast to start the day.
We must endorse programs aimed to enhance the educational welfare of our children. As President Obama recently stated in his first address to a joint session of Congress, ``These education policies will open the doors of opportunity for our children. But it is up to us to ensure they walk through them.''
Beginning over twenty years ago, and continuing today, scholarly research has established that the School Breakfast Program significantly improves the cognitive abilities and learning capacities of children. Matched controlled studies, for example, indicate that low-income children who receive school breakfasts do significantly better on a variety of indicators than low-income peers who go without breakfasts. Notably, the better outcomes associated with school breakfast include both educational preparedness (attendance, energy, alertness, memory) and educational outcome measures (math scores, grades, reading ability).
When a child misses even one meal, let alone experiences chronic food shortages, impairments occur whether they are lethargy and inattention, tiredness and distraction, or actual physical symptoms such as stomachaches and headaches. The research from the United States Department of Agriculture shows that feeding children breakfast in school helps to prevent these adverse outcomes. Children getting breakfast at school also are sick less often, have fewer problems associated with hunger, such as dizziness, stomachaches and ear aches, and do significantly better than their peers who do not get a school breakfast in terms of cooperation, discipline and inter-personal behaviors.
Mr. Speaker, our failure to fully utilize the School Breakfast Program has substantial costs, costs that greatly reduce the return on educational investment in communities and states across the nation. Moreover, longer-term costs also are borne by young children who arrive at school unable to fully participate in the educational process due to lack of adequate nutrition.
We, as Members of Congress, cannot allow for a matter such as child hunger, which we as Congress can help eradicate, to act as an impediment to the education of our children. President Obama articulated very fittingly, that ``in a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity--it is a pre-requisite.''
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H. Res. 210, expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that providing breakfast in schools through the National School Breakfast Program has a positive impact on classroom performance, because the School Breakfast Program represents a key way to protect these children and to get a better return on educational investments as well.
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