North Little Rock’s nutrition team strives to make breakfast fun for students. | Photo courtesy of North Little Rock School District
When Child Nutrition Director Mary Lee Dennis first arrived at the North Little Rock School District in North Little Rock, Ark., at the beginning of the 2021-22 school year, her immediate supervisor approached her with a binder filled with comments about the district. is approaching. Breakfast program.
At that time, participation in the program was approximately 30%. Dennis She knew she needed to make some changes to increase those numbers.
Currently, the program is on the rise, with participants steadily increasing each school year.
“We’re growing about 5% every year,” he says. Dennis. “[Our total breakfast participation] So far this year, it’s hovered around 40% to 42%. ”
The team’s efforts to increase the number of meals eaten in the morning are gaining attention. They were recently awarded the “”.Largest increase in breakfast participants award” As part of THe is from the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance. 2024 School Breakfast Month Challenge.
Over the past two years, the team has embraced change and enhanced the breakfast program by providing a little bit of fun for students who come to the cafeteria for their morning meal each day.
Tidying up
As with most changes, it was initially difficult for staff to get used to the changes during breakfast service.
One of the ways Dennis encouraged his staff to embrace the new direction they were headed was by showing the data behind why the team needed to make these changes.
“I think a lot of directors don’t discuss data in detail with their managers, either because they themselves don’t understand it well or don’t think it’s applicable. “I think it was really important to show how many of them there were and how many students we were actually missing out on,” she says.
According to Dennis, another element that was essential to supporting staff change was providing a space for open communication and transparency. The manager meets with Dennis weekly to discuss what’s working and what’s not working at breakfast. For things that aren’t going well, Dennis encourages his team to work through them and find ways to fix them.
“If they say ‘no’ to something, I say, ‘Okay, perfect, I’ll say no, but in that case, give me an alternative, give me a solution.’ ” she says.
Dennis also made some technical changes on the backend to make things more seamless for his staff. For example, each manager now has access to Google Drive, which contains a variety of resources. This includes a Google Sheet with all recipes, ingredients in the recipes, and Sysco numbers.
“This is a one-stop shop,” Dennis says. “They can pull up the menu, see what’s on there, and then pull this sheet out, and they can effectively order and predict what they need to order.”
Enjoying and serving fresh ingredients
The team has now removed approximately 90% of prepackaged items from the breakfast menu.
“Most of the time, [the menu is] We now have more homemade breakfast items,” says Dennis.
New options like pancake bars, where students can top flapjacks with blueberries, strawberries and chocolate chips, have become fan favorites, especially among younger generations. You can also choose sausage or bacon.
In the upper grades, smoothies and parfaits become the most popular menu items. Dennis also tried to include foods that students would pick up at the drive-thru before school, such as sausage biscuits.
Alongside new product offerings, Dennis and the team are focused on celebrating school breakfasts and enjoying mealtimes.
For example, during National Waffle Day, the team worked with school administrators to create flyers promoting the day and promoted them on social media. National School Breakfast Week, held every March, is an excuse to celebrate school meals in all their glory, Dennis said. “[This year], a fun and friendly competition was held between all the schools and whoever had the most beautifully decorated cafeteria won the prize. ”
Breakfast Banana Split was the menu item served during this year’s National School Breakfast Week.
School principals and other administrators came to the cafeteria to serve breakfast on weekdays as well.
Such events and activities disseminate information about the program and the nutrition team’s accomplishments, increasing both participation and team morale.
“My entire staff does this every day,” Dennis says. “That’s why it’s so important to get more people involved and see what we’re doing.”
Second breakfast provided
Looking ahead to next year, Dennis is looking for ways to increase participation even further. One way is to offer upperclassmen, who often don’t come to school early enough to eat breakfast in the cafeteria, the opportunity to eat breakfast after their first class.
“They sometimes wake up and get to school at the same time as the late bell,” Dennis says.
This summer, Dennis plans to meet with building administrators and other district officials to work on a plan to provide these students with another breakfast option in the morning.
Ideally, Dennis would like to offer students the opportunity to grab breakfast between classes from a breakfast cart strategically placed in the hallway.
Because the district is located in a low-income area, Dennis feels it is especially important to make sure students have a morning meal no matter what time they arrive at school.
Although the team still has a long way to go to get all students involved in school breakfasts, Dennis is proud of what the team has accomplished over the past two years and looks forward to continuing to grow the program over time. looking forward to it.
“There is still a lot of work to do, but it is clear in two short years how many students we will be able to capture while doing this work,” she says.
