It would be an understatement to say that things have changed a lot in the past year, but today I want to celebrate a consistent resource in our school district for students and families. Ever since we closed school buildings – and before the pandemic started – Student Nutrition Services has been committed to providing nutritious meals for students.
Students do better in school when they have access to healthy meals, and in the San Francisco Unified School District we are committed to ensuring that all the students who need them have this vital nourishment.
Over the past few years, we’ve celebrated National School Breakfast Week in classrooms in March to highlight the importance of starting the day with a healthy meal. When we study in person, we have a program called Breakfast After the Bell, which may include serving breakfast in the classroom, on a hall car, or during morning breaks. Breakfast schools After the Bell programs, more and more students will have breakfast, which has many advantages.
We usually serve our 1 millionth breakfast of the school year in early March, right around the national day, to celebrate the school breakfast. This school year, I am pleased to announce that we have served an additional 600,000 breakfasts, which means we have had up to 1.6 million breakfasts since the school buildings closed in March last year.
And don’t fret – there are plenty of opportunities for families to celebrate National School Breakfast Week with us from home!
Ask your child what their favorite breakfast is and why. My favorite breakfast is oatmeal because it’s delicious and you can add so many good things to it like raisins and cinnamon.
Another way to celebrate is to join our original educational program “SF Loves Learning” on KTVU Plus or the SFUSD YouTube channel to meet some of our employees and find out about their favorite breakfast. You can find the segment on Monday, March 8th show.
As a reminder, SFUSD families can have breakfast for free at 18 Grab & Go locations on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Get five breakfasts on Tuesday plus lunch, dinner, fresh fruits and vegetables worth five days. Get two breakfasts on Thursday, plus lunch, dinner, fresh fruit and vegetables for two days.
Grab & Go’s breakfast menus include a variety of hot and cold breakfasts such as cereal, bars, yogurt, French toast sticks, muffins, bars, oatmeal (my favorite!) And breakfast rolls.
At sfusd.edu/schoolfood you will find current locations, times, schedules and information.
Vincent Matthews is the superintendent of schools in the San Francisco Unified School District. He is a guest columnist.
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