Above: Khalil Gray, a kindergartener at William A. Diggs Elementary School, searches for Lucky Charms among the cereal options at breakfast. Diggs’ food service manager Tracey Baierlein said Lucky Charms is the most popular cereal at the school. National School Breakfast Week is celebrated March 7 to 11. Photo courtesy of Charles County Public Schools.
Waldorf, MD – William A. Diggs Elementary School students and food service staff have breakfast down to a timed science.
“It’s all over in 10, 15 minutes,” said Tracey Baierline, food service manager at Diggs who said her crew feeds the whirlwind of 300 students hot and cold breakfasts each morning and about 500 lunches each afternoon.
National School Breakfast Week is March 7 to 11. The School Nutrition Association holds the week each year to reiterate the importance of breakfast.
“They need to get their morning nutrition,” Baierline said of the students. “It helps with their productiveness during the day.”
“Breakfast is often said to be the most important meal of the day,” said Diggs Principal Sandra Taylor. “I believe students who eat breakfast are more alert and have better concentration. This increased focus will hopefully allow our students to understand the subject matter better as well as increase student performance.”
This year at Diggs, Baierline and her team set up a breakfast station in a front hallway to better accommodate students who are dropped off in the car lane. Instead of having to walk to the cafeteria at the other end of the school, the students can pick up their hot or cold meal on the way to class. Bus riders enter the school closer to the cafeteria where they select their options.
The school system has grown from serving 3,000 breakfasts per day in 2010 to about 10,500 a day in 2016, said William Kreuter, supervisor of food service for Charles County Public Schools (CCPS). Fourteen schools in the county are Maryland Meals For Achievement (MMFA) schools which serve free breakfasts to all students in classrooms. Those that aren’t MMFA schools follow a routine like the one at Diggs.
Everything is “grab and go” at breakfast and has been at Diggs for about four years, Baierline said. The kids get their food and head to their classrooms where they eat during morning announcements. There is an assortment of cereals — Lucky Charms is the No. 1 choice at Diggs —and hot meals include mini-waffles, classic and flavored pancakes and other offerings depending on the menu. There’s always fruit, milk and juice, Baierline said.
High school students can participate in “traditional breakfast” sitting in the cafeteria before classes start. There also is “second chance breakfast” or “breakfast after the bell” where students can pick up something to eat before heading to second period. Since adding the second chance option, high school breakfast participation has doubled, Kreuter said.
