To help build, promote, and engage stakeholders in your school breakfast program, Georgia’s School Breakfast Leadership Institute Team has put together a School Breakfast Challenge Toolkit and a scorecard. These resources can be used to help support and improve your existing school breakfast program, or even start a new one! This year, in addition to competing to increase participation in school breakfast, school divisions can win prizes and cash for finding ways to improve school breakfast nutritional quality, integrating Farm to School, or incorporating other program innovations. Resources have been compiled by No Kid Hungry, Georgia Department of Education, The Dairy Alliance, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Atlanta Community Food Bank, and HealthMPowers. If there is something that you can’t find within this toolkit, please contact us at fuelingga@gadoe.org so that we can find the resource you need!
Scorecard and Criteria
Check our these ideas for way to promote school breakfast! Keep track of your actions and at the end of the challenge you’ll be invited to submit your scorecard to win additional prizes.
School Breakfast Toolkit
If you’re interested in new ways to promote your school breakfast program and increase participation, choosing an alternative “Breakfast After the Bell” model may be a great fit. Models like Grab-n-Go Breakfast, Breakfast in the Classroom, and Second Chance Breakfast are known to increase participation rates across all grade levels. In this section, see resources from both The Dairy Alliance and No Kid Hungry’s Center for Best Practices to help promote a new program in your school with timelines, pre-implementation checklists, impact data, and promotional videos.
Implementing Alternate Models:
- Expanding Breakfast
- Breakfast in the Classroom Roll-out Timeline
- Grab and Go Roll-out Timeline
- Pre-Implementation Checklist
Videos for Principals about Breakfast After the Bell:
Promotion Strategies:
In order to serve more students at breakfast every morning, it will be very important to provide items that cater to them. You may find out this information through taste tests, surveys, or student focus groups. When implementing an alternative model such as Grab-n-Go or Breakfast in the Classroom, it is also important to include items that are easy to handle, mess-resistant, and even reusable. See resources from The Dairy Alliance and No Kid Hungry’s Center for Best Practices that provide recipes and guides on how to tailor school breakfast menus for Breakfast After the Bell and students of all ages.
Curious about how you can get your school’s principal or your district superintendent interested in the school breakfast movement, but don’t know where to start? Resources from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, The Dairy Alliance, and No Kid Hungry’s Center for Best Practices provide talking points for conversations with stakeholders, videos with lived experience from school and district leaders, and data on the positive impact that school breakfast can have on student performance and well-being.
- Feed Your Brain Fact Sheet
- School Breakfast Pledge Form
- Strong4Life Training Link
- The Value of School Meals Info Sheet
- Innovative Breakfast Delivery Options
- educators guide to school breakfast
- Breakfast After the Bell Myths
- Chronic Absenteeism Micro-report
- School Breakfast — Healthier Than You Think (ENGLISH language version)
- School Breakfast — Healthier Than You Think (SPANISH language version)
- Breakfast FAQs for Parents (customizable English and customizable Spanish)
- Breakfast in the Classroom Customizable Letter to Families
Testimony Videos:
One of the most critical stakeholder groups in your school breakfast program are undoubtedly the students themselves. In order to get more students eating school breakfast every morning, there must be age- and culture-appropriate ways to promote and make the program accessible to them. Additionally, they may need a constant reminder that breakfast is available to all students every morning. This may mean that they need to see posters on the walls, hear it on the morning announcements, and be reminded by their peers and teachers! See resources from No Kid Hungry’s Center for Best Practices, HealthMPowers, and even the Atlanta Falcons to help engage students in your school breakfast program.
- Atlanta Falcons SoundBytes (don’t forget to tag @AtlantaFalcons and @MattBosher5 , if posting!)
- Breakfast Meme Toolkit & How to Guide
- School Breakfast Promotion Strategies
- Breakfast After the Bell Strategies for Middle and High Schools
- Get Your Breakfast Meme On Flyer
- Food Based Learning and Educational Experience
Maybe you’ve thought about incorporating Georgia Grown ingredients into your lunch menus, but what about at breakfast time? Both Georgia Department of Education and The Dairy Alliance supply a wealth of resources around not only how to incorporate farm-to-school into the cafeteria menus, but also in the classroom. Within these resources, you will find recipes, activities, marketing materials, and information on how to procure local foods for your school.
