Bill > S741

Introduced Session

This bill requires a public school operated by a local or regional school district of the State in which 5% or more of the students enrolled in the school on or before the last school day before October 16 of the preceding school year were eligible for free or reduced price meals under the federal School Lunch Program or the federal School Breakfast Program to establish a school breakfast program in the school. Under the current statutes, a school with 5% or more of those eligible students must have a school lunch program, and a school with 20% or more of those eligible students must have a school breakfast program. The new requirements are modeled on the existing requirements and mandate that the program be first established in grades pre-K through 6 by September 1, 2015, and in all other grades by September 1, 2016. Plans for the initial program must be submitted to the Department of Agriculture for approval. If a plan is not submitted by the date specified in the bill, a school district must establish a program based on a model plan provided by the department. The bill permits the Department of Agriculture to grant a one-year waiver to a school district under certain conditions. Currently, the vast majority of New Jersey school districts serve breakfast to a fraction of eligible children. According to the Food Research and Action Center, New Jersey ranks 37th nationwide for its participation rate in the School Breakfast Program, and estimates that between 20 and 25 percent of schools that offer lunch do not offer school breakfast, denying tens of thousands of low-income schoolchildren the opportunity to start their day with a healthy breakfast. An appropriation to the Department of Agriculture by the State each fiscal year is required in order to provide the State share for the school breakfast programs established under the bill.

AI Summary

Committee Categories

Jim Beach (D)*,  Loretta Weinberg (D)*, 

Introduced in the Senate, Referred to Senate Education Committee (on 01/12/2016)