Breakfast program helps Troy students start days off right

Troy Public School students from high school down to kindergarten are starting their school days off with breakfast and time to talk about their lives and their days before they get them started.

The Breakfast in the Classroom program, a Montana state program in partnership with the Montana Food Bank Network, takes a different approach to providing the first meal of the day to students.

Instead of coming in early to have a meal, students get to eat breakfast during their homeroom period, said Troy Public Schools Superintendent Jacob Francom. In addition, because Troy has enrolled in a program that allows any student who wants breakfast to eat, there is no division in the classroom between eligible and ineligible students.

Even the teachers are able to eat with the students if they want, he said.

The program goes hand-in-hand with the high school’s advisory program, where small groups of students meet with teachers for their homeroom period.

“They have breakfast with a teacher in small groups where they can get help on homework, they can build a relationship with that teacher, they can do a daily check in right at the very beginning,” Francom said.

Francom has a small advisory group he meets with each morning.

“They all seem to really like having their breakfast, and then starting the day off a little bit slower,” he said.

According to statistics compiled by the Montana Food Bank Network, about 70 percent of the 387 students in Troy schools eat breakfast at the school. Though 259 of those students are eligible for the Free and Reduced Price lunch program, only an average of 181 make use of the program, about the same as participate on average in the breakfast program.

Francom said that the program only started in the past two years at Troy, and some of the high school students who don’t participate may do so simply because it is unfamiliar to them. In contrast, at the lower grades, almost every student participates.

Kristin Newton is the Food Service Manager for Troy Public Schools, and also one of two workers in the kitchen at W.F. Morrison Elementary School.

“We have it down to a science,” Newton said.

Each morning, the kitchen staff at the schools prepare a different meal, load it into rolling coolers, and either roll it out to the classes a the elementary school, or wait for students to pick it up at the high school.

From muffins on Mondays to cereal on Tuesdays and something hot such as scrambled eggs or pancakes on Wednesdays, Newton and the other kitchen staff try to come up with a reasonable variety while staying within the school’s nutritional guidelines, she said.

And the teachers at the middle school have readily embraced the concept, she said.

“Our staff has been fabulous, and I know it’s not always easy,” she said. “It’s a little bit of time out of their day, but they have been behind it 100 percent. I think they see that kids need to eat.”

For those students who might have already eaten or just don’t feel hungry, they can still sit down with their classmates and join in the discussions before classes begin, Francom said.

Kaleb Price, a high school English teacher in his first year, said he had never encountered a breakfast program quite like Troy’s before.

“The majority of my kids do eat the breakfast each morning, and I think that says a lot, that they like it, and that they depend on it,” Price said. “Some of them unfortunately do, depend on it for that first meal of the day.”

Price said he enjoys the opportunity to get to know the students he has in the morning.

“I have a bunch of juniors, and so the morning time for them is rather quiet,” he said. “But even though we don’t talk a lot, I think it’s a good time for them just to mentally focus.”

That doesn’t mean there’s no conversation, though. Sometimes they talk about what is on the students’ minds — such as what to do when they graduate high school — or teachers can use prompts from the school’s character education program or from speakers who visit as part of the Gear Up college readiness program, Price said.

“I get some pretty good responses,” Price said. “Usually they have something to say, for the majority of the students.”

Though the school has seen improvements in student performance and discipline, Francom hesitated to tie them directly to eating breakfast alone. But, he said that the entire context in which the students have that breakfast gives them a foundation for their day.

Most of it just comes down to showing students good choices and discussing with them how to make those choices, Francom said.

“I mean, that’s what character education really comes down to, is making good choices, whether now, or choices that will affect them in their future, or making plans and goals for their future,” he said.