By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The Hays school district has seen a 30 percent increase in students eating breakfast at school when the district started offering free breakfasts for all students earlier this month.
Superintendent Ron Wilson said the district has a lot of positive press as well as other districts reaching out to Hays about the new program.
Jessica Younker, director of nutrition services, gave a report to the Hays school board at its meeting on Monday.
The district has implemented a second-chance breakfast at Hays High School, which has boosted breakfast numbers at the school.
The district is serving an average of 169 students breakfast between first and second periods at HHS.
One of the board members asked if the second chance program could be extended to the middle school. Younker said she could explore that possibility with the HMS staff.
Wilson said there could be issues with carving out the time for the program in the middle school schedule.
Younker said she explored trying to offer both free breakfast and lunch for all schools.
While Younker said she thought the district should break even with the breakfast program, providing both lunch and breakfast would result in a $700,000 per year revenue loss.
She said it was not financially feasible.
Because 70 percent of Lincoln Elementary School students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch, the district received a grant to provide all children in the school free breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks for children in the afterschool program.
Younker credited new procedures that qualify children for free or reduced-cost school meals when families apply for Medicaid as one of the reasons the district was able to identify so many families in need of food assistance.
The district has newly partnered with Domino's Pizza for a monthly pizza day for all the schools. Dominos makes pizzas to school food standards and delivers them to the school at a price comparable to the district's cost to make the pizzas, Younker said.
HHS Principal Shawn Henderson said the pizza has been very popular with students.
The district also received a $10,443 grant to purchase local food. The district bought four steers with one more to be slaughtered next month. Two of these steers were bought from 4-Hers who are students at USD 489 schools.
"I want to thank you for how you’ve been working for the kids," Board President Ken Brooks said to Younker. "I really applaud that."