WASHINGTON, March 19, 2001 (PRIMEZONE) -- Bob Toomer, Tacoma (WA) School District Field Assistant, and Camellia Patey, Manager of School Foodservice with Dairy Management, Inc., will discuss school breakfast programs during The American School Food Service Association's (ASFSA) March online chat, scheduled for Thursday, March 22, from 4 to 5 p.m., EST. Toomer and Patey will discuss various strategies for and experiences with increasing student participation in school breakfast programs. The chat is sponsored by the National Dairy Council.
The School Breakfast Program (SBP) is a federally assisted meal program operating in more than 72,000 schools and institutions. It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free breakfasts to 7.4 million children each school day. The program was established under the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 to ensure that all children have access to a healthy breakfast at school to promote learning readiness and healthy eating behaviors. ASFSA recently celebrated the program during National School Breakfast Week (March 5-9).
During the chat, Toomer and Patey will discuss how they have been able to identify ways to appeal to students as they become more sophisticated consumers with high expectations. Toomer's district in Tacoma has been participating in the Breakfast Program for about 15 years. Six years ago, a No-Cost Breakfast program began providing meals at 15 of its 56 schools. In 10 of those schools, the district serves as many breakfasts as lunches.
Patey was instrumental in the development of "Expanding Breakfast," a training program that teaches school foodservice operations the basics of developing an alternative breakfast service and provides guidance through the necessary financial evaluations.
The chat should provide a valuable opportunity to learn how to feed more kids a healthy breakfast. The information will be valuable to districts where breakfast programs are already in place and to districts that are considering beginning a new program.
All ASFSA members and the general public are invited to participate in the chat. To participate, log on to the World Wide Web and go to ASFSA's home page at http://www.asfsa.org, Your Child Nutrition eSource, on the day of the chat. There will be instructions on the ASFSA home page for connecting to the chat. A transcript of the chat will be available through the Web site within three days as well.
ASFSA also has scheduled a chat for April 26, 2001, at 4 p.m. EST, on the subject of universal feeding or more specifically, Provisions 2 and 3 of the National School Lunch Act. ASFSA will host chats every fourth Thursday of the month at 4 p.m. EST. In February, ASFSA President-elect Marcia Smith (FL) was the guest for ASFSA's after-school snacks online chat. The transcript for this chat is now available at http://www.asfsa.org.
ASFSA is a national, non-profit professional organization representing more than 58,000 members who provide high-quality, low-cost meals to students across the country. Founded in 1946, ASFSA is the only association devoted exclusively to protecting and enhancing children's health and well-being through school meals and sound nutrition education.
-0-
CONTACT: The American School Food Service Association
Joseph Haas, ext. 122
Laura Hanley, ext. 116
(703) 739-3900