[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 125 (Friday, September 18, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10606-S10607]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   THE CHILD NUTRITION REAUTHORIZATION ACT AND THE SCHOOL BREAKFAST 
                           RESEARCH PROPOSAL

 Mr. Johnson. Mr. President, I rise today to give my full 
support for the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act. This important 
legislation funds important child nutrition programs for the next five 
years until the year 2003.
  I want to commend Agriculture Committee Chairman Lugar and Ranking 
Member Harkin and my colleagues on the Agriculture Committee for 
working cooperatively, in a bipartisan spirit, to unanimously pass this 
bill out of Committee. Also, I want to thank my Senate colleagues for 
passing this vital legislation unanimously last evening. Clearly, this 
demonstrates our commitment to feeding our nation's children.
  The Child Nutrition Reauthorization bill provides funding for the 
National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, the Child and Adult Care 
Food Program, the Summer Food Service Program, the Women, Infant and 
Children (WIC) program along with many other nutritious food programs 
to feed our nation's youth.
  One of the provisions in this legislation that I worked closely on 
during the creation of this legislation was a $20 million provision 
that provides for detailed research on how school breakfast impacts a 
child's academic success.
  This research provision is a modified version of S. 1396, the Meals 
for Achievement Act that I introduced last November. The research 
provision provides for the mandatory funding for a $20 million school 
breakfast research project to further test the impacts of school 
breakfast on children's academic and behavioral skills.
  This provision will require the Secretary of Agriculture to conduct a 
five

[[Page S10607]]

year school breakfast study in six different school districts 
throughout the United States--involving approximately 15,000 school 
children.
  As I've stated before, the research on the impacts of children eating 
school breakfast speaks for itself. Not only do academic scores in 
reading, writing, and math improve, levels of hyperactivity and 
tardiness are greatly reduced.
  The purpose of this study is to further analyze the existing data and 
to provide additional research and data at the national level and to 
prove the positive impacts of eating a school breakfast. It is 
important to note that the funding for the research provision will 
require no new additional expenses and maintains our balanced budget 
discipline. It is not my intention with this research project to create 
a whole new federal bureaucracy that only deals with the implementation 
of school breakfast program. Furthermore, after the researchers have 
completed the five-year study and find school breakfast does indeed 
improve a child's academic success, we, as federal lawmakers, can work 
with local and state school authorities to create guidelines of how 
school breakfasts can improve a child's academic success.
  The rationale for this provision of the Child Nutrition 
Reauthorization Act is very simple. In order for the United States to 
compete effectively in the world, we must have an educated and 
productive workforce. In order to have an educated and productive 
workforce, we must prepare our children to learn. In order to prepare 
our children to learn they must be well nourished, and that begins with 
a good healthy breakfast.
  The best teachers in the world, with the best standards, cannot teach 
a hungry child. A child who begins his or her school day with their 
stomach growling because they either did not have time to eat breakfast 
or there was no breakfast to be served, is simply too distracted to 
focus on the lessons being provided by the teacher.
  In 1994, the Minnesota legislature directed the Minnesota Department 
of Children, Families and Learning to implement a universal breakfast 
pilot program integrating breakfast into the education schedule for all 
students. The evaluation of the pilot project, performed by the Center 
for Applied Research and Educational Improvement at the University of 
Minnesota, showed that when all students are involved in school 
breakfast, there is a general increase in learning and achievement.
  Researchers at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital recently 
completed a study on the results of universal free breakfast at one 
public school in Philadelphia and two in Baltimore. The study, 
published this week in the Archives of Adolescent and Pediatric 
Medicine which is a journal of the American Medical Association, found 
that students who ate the breakfast showed great improvement in math 
grades, attendance, and punctuality. The researchers also observed that 
students displayed fewer signs of depression, anxiety, hyperactivity, 
and other behavioral problems.
  If we are serious about improving our education system in America, we 
must first prepare our children to learn. The time has come, therefore, 
to build upon the pilot program in Minnesota, Philadelphia, Baltimore, 
and other cities, and integrate school breakfast into the education 
day, at least at the elementary school level.
  I believe that ensuring a nutritious breakfast for our school kids 
will help close this ``opportunity deficit.'' As America enters the 
21st century, we cannot afford to allow a single child to be left 
behind. As Robert Kennedy once wrote, ``We need the best of many--not 
of just a few. We must strive for excellence.'' Clearly, the Meals for 
Achievement provision in the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act is a 
step in that direction.

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