Kodiak Middle School breakfast jumps from 11 students a day to 127 with grab-and-go meals

When a bus schedule change left Kodiak Middle School students only about 10 minutes before class, down from 20, the school stopped making them wait in a breakfast line. It switched to grab-and-go meals, and in the first week of school, the number of students eating breakfast each day jumped from 11 to 127, or from about 3% of students to about 31%.

"For many students, that simply wasn't enough time to wait in line, eat breakfast, and get to class on time," Jerilyn Urban wrote in the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development's October bulletin. Hungry students had been showing up at the nurse's office mid-morning, she wrote.

Breakfast and lunch are free for every student at the school under a federal program that lets high-need schools serve free meals to all students without individual applications. The Kodiak Island Borough School District added three more schools in town to the program this year. A new student food council also had a say in the menu, and it brought back strawberry milk.

Districtwide, about 7% of students ate school breakfast last year. The district's goal is 60% for breakfast and 50% for lunch.