e. The breakfast program procedures for appealing administrative decisions should be the same as in the lunch program. If these procedural provisions are implemented for the School Breakfast Program, then needy children will have the same protections they currently are entitled to under the School Lunch Program. ELIMINATE LOCAL FUND MATCHING REQUIREMENT 6. More nonfood assistance funds should be made available to school districts. Many schools throughout the country are not providing the lunch or breakfast program because they do not have the necessary equipment to store, refrigerate, cook, or serve food. The $16.1 million appropriation for nonfood assistance funds this fiscal year has been wholly inadequate. We, therefore, recommend that substantially increased funds be provided under Section 5 of the Child Nutrition Act (42 U.S.C. S1774)-somewhere in the vicinity of $80 million a year. In addition, the 25-percent local matching requirement should be eliminated-that provision has prevented some of the neediest school districts in the country from applying for nonfood assistance. LACK OF PERMANENCE IS CRIPPLING 7. The School Breakfast Program should become a permanent program. Since local districts do not have faith in the Federal Government's commitment to the breakfast program, it is important to immediately declare the program a permanent one. Unless this is done, few school districts will apply for the program since they will remain reluctant to start a program that may have to be dropped soon thereafter. I am hopeful that Congress will pass such comprehensive legislation before the end of this session. Moreover, the Congress must substantially increase its fiscal commitment to the program. If this is not done, the Agriculture Department will continue to restrict the program's quality and growth, thereby causing irreparable harm to children's emotional, educational and physiological well-being. CONGRESS NOT GIVEN RESPONSIBLE ANSWER Senator HART. Thank you very much. I am sure all of us are amazed by the figures that you have given us. No matter how you slice it, the conclusion is inescapable. I think that the information which Congress sought to obtain from the survey by the Department-given the events that occurred at and about the time the survey was being conducted-the figures given us are not responsive to the question that we asked be answered. Less than half-a-dozen States show, through their State directors, schools desiring the program whose number totals more than the 50-State total that the Department tells us desire it. Mr. POLLACK. That is correct, Senator Hart. Senator BELLMON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like first to compliment Mr. Pollack on the very fine statement, but I think to add credibility to your statement it might be useful if you would tell us for the record the professional background of FRAC and those who compiled this information for you. Mr. POLLACK. Yes, sir. The Food Research and Action Center is an organization funded exclusively by the Office of Economic Opportunity here in Washington. We are a grantee of the Emergency Food and Medical Services Division of OEO. The Food Research and Action Center has been in operation for over a year and a half, and essentially our function is to help various groups in numerous neighborhoods where the food programs have not been fully responsive to the needs of poor people. We have helped them in regard to the Food Stamp Program, the Commodity Distribution Program, the School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program. In essence, we try to provide information to local groups so that they can exercise their rights under the program; and, wherever the program has various deficiencies, we work with those groups to try and make sure that those malfunctions are remedied. We are based out of New York. We have a staff of approximately 15 people, three attorneys-including myself-various field workers, and secretarial staff. Senator BELLMON. Could you tell us a little more about the individuals who have been in charge of this particular research project? Mr. POLLACK. Yes, sir. The two people who are mainly responsible for this research project are sitting to my left and right, Miss Suzanne Vaupel and Mr. Mark Irvings. Suzanne used to work with the League of Women Voters before she came to the Food Research and Action Center. She also spent some time working with the National Council on Hunger and Malnutrition. Mr. Irvings is a graduate of Harvard, where he majored in economics, and he hopes to attend law school this coming semester. WHY IS USDA RESTRICTING HUNGER PROGRAMS? Senator BELLMON. I want to raise just a couple of questions about your statement. The last sentence in your statement apparently expresses your conclusion that the Department of Agriculture will continue to restrict the program's quality and growth. Can you tell me why you make that statement? Mr. POLLACK. Well, the main reason I make that statement is that we have found in the breakfast program particularly, and certainly consistent with our experience with the lunch program this fall, the Department in numerous administrative ways has tried to curtail this program. Has tried to stop the program from expanding through several means. I think the report is one clear indication. Obviously, the Congress is very much dependent upon the Department to provide it with accurate facts and figures-about how the program operates, and the need for increased funds, and the need for new legislation. Obviously, when you get a report that misrepresents what the true need of the program is, the Congress is not in an adequate position to provide substantial funds which are needed to sustain breakfast programs in local communities. Secondly, in other small ways, but for local administrators in very substantial ways, the Department has really curtailed the program by dropping Section 32 funds as a source of program revenues. Through this action, the Department has sharply reduced the amount of revenues that are available for States to implement the program. Thirdly, in such ways as refusing to promulgate regulations which provide decent and nutritious breakfasts, the Department has been deficient. As I tried to catalogue in my testimony, the Department's prescribed breakfast provides far, far less than the 25 to 33 percent of the RDA that nutritionists say are necessary to provide children with an adequate breakfast. Fourth, the Congress-and I did not cover this in my testimonythe Congress, in June, passed legislation which authorized the Department to provide school districts with 100 percent of the funds necessary to operate the program. The Department has yet to promulgate those regulations. Mr. Irvings will go into that in greater detail. Consequently, the whole lifeline of the program has been stymied by the Department of Agriculture; the lifeline is money, the lifeline is food. The Department of Agriculture has made sure that States will not have sufficient money so that they can expand the program. They have not promulgated the necessary regulations that would provide a decent quality program for children; and, consequentlyit is for that reason-I think it is important that the Congress take this matter into its own hands and pass legislation that will assure that children will not be hungry, due to the Department's actions. Mr. IRVINGS. Excuse me, Senator Bellmon, but extending this. Just last month, the USDA issued proposed regulations which I will go into in fair amount of detail in my testimony. This will provide even more evidence of their efforts to cut back the program. Senator BELLMON. Well, the question I want to get to, Mr. Chairman, is this: You have been, I would say, almost totally critical of the USDA. Based on your research and your conclusions, do you feel the USDA should be relieved of responsibility for administering feeding programs? Mr. POLLACK. Well, we did not make that recommendation in our book. We thought about that. I am not sure that is as critical as it is to make sure that we have sufficient funds, and that adequate provisions in the statute are provided. I think probably we would receive better attention in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. After all, they are concerned with education, and food in schools is an integral part of the educational process. I think there is an artificial delineation to put a breakfast program and a lunch program under the aegis of the Department of Agriculture because it seems to be implying that food is not a part of the educational process, and we know it is because hungry children simply cannot learn. Consequently, it might be better if the programs were placed under the jurisdiction of Health, Education and Welfare, because then Congress would be saying definitively that these food programs are an integral part of the educational process. But we did not go into that in our study and we thought that the other recommendations, the substantive recommendations, were more urgent. Senator BELLMON. Now, in your report, on page 28* and also in the statement you have just made, you expressed your feeling that food is an integral part of the educational environment or process and that a large percentage of American children come to school without breakfast and that hunger limits their ability to learn. Can you, in anything like a statistical way, document that statement, or will some of your other witnesses do that? Mr. POLLACK. Our next witness, Miss Suzanne Vaupel, will be covering that in her testimony, so I will leave that to her. Senator BELLMON. I will not press it at this time. Does your group have the capacity to determine how many or how much food would be used-how many eggs or how many pounds of ham could be used by a breakfast program? Could you, perhaps, give us some idea of what kind of an impact that would have on the agricultural surplus condition of the country? Have you ever considered this aspect of child feeding? Mr. POLLACK. We did not include that in our report, Senator Bellmon, but if you wish, we could try and provide you with some data on that. But we did not include that in the report. Senator BELLMON. Mr. Chairman, I have other questions but I believe I will wait with them until the other witnesses testify. Senator HART. That data might be useful. Senator BELLMON. I would like to have such data if you could prepare it. Do you have that capability? Mr. POLLACK. Well, we have not done that in the past, Senator Bellmon, so we would have to talk about that some before we prepare such a report. But if we can, I would let you know immediately and we will prepare it. SEEMINGLY... PARADOXICAL SPENDING Senator BELLMON. The reason for it is fairly simple. We are spending, as I said earlier, $3 to $5 billion a year out of the Treasury to keep something in excess of 50 million acres in this country out of production. It seems ironic that while we are doing that we are limiting access of children to the food that these acres could produce. I am curious to know, if we spent part of that $3 to $5 billion on making food available, how much less we might need to spend in keeping land out of production. Mr. POLLACK. Well, we will endeavor, if it is at all possible, to provide you with whatever data we can in that direction. Senator BELLMON. I withhold my further questions, Mr. Chairman. Senator HART. All right. Miss Vaupel. STATEMENT OF MISS SUZANNE VAUPEL, PROJECT COORDINATOR, FRAC, NEW YORK, N.Y. Miss VAUPEL. Mr. Chairman, Senator Bellmon: The first purpose of our project was to evaluate the nutritional and educational consequences of the School Breakfast Program. To do this, we conducted in-depth studies of a sampling of individual See Appendix 3, p. 119. School Breakfast Programs. At each school we interviewed the people most directly involved with the program-the administration, teachers, parents and children. The schools we chose to visit represented the various geographical and demographical areas listed in the testimony. Senator HART. This statement will be printed in full.* Miss VAUPEL. In our sampling, we also made an effort to visit schools. which had various types of kitchen facilities and serving areas. A few schools had a self-contained kitchen and cafeteria. The majority, however, were schools which had been built without kitchens and which had to devise alternative methods of cooking and serving. Some schools received meals cooked in the kitchens of other schools. These meals were either prepackaged or transported in bulk. Other schools received meals from a central kitchen which served the whole school system. Locations where the children were served also varied greatly. While a few schools had cafeterias, most had to utilize some other area. Regardless of the facilities available however, we found the programs equally successful. In all schools visited we found the educational and nutritional consequences of the breakfast program to be rather incredible. In our study we have included a representative sample from interviews, letters and periodicals that reflect the high praise of the program which we found in every school. The most obvious benefits of the program were the changes in the physical condition of the children. Teachers said they no longer heard constant complaints of headaches, stomach aches and cramps in their morning classes. The commonplace occurrence of a crying child saying, "I just don't feel good" no longer happened. School nurses pointed out even more substantial physical improvements, such as fewer illnesses and the disappearing of sores around the mouth which resulted from Vitamin C deficiency. Further notable improvements were observed in the classroom performance of participants in the School Breakfast Program. Before the program was operating, children were irritable, restless, and often daydreaming or even falling asleep in their morning classes. Once their primary need for food was satisfied with breakfast the children were more alert and able to concentrate on their studies. Teachers and principals were astounded at the improvement in the children's attention span and achievement. Teachers were pleased that the morning hours, which can be the most productive, were no longer wasted for many children. CHILD BEHAVIOR PATTERN IMPROVEMENTS Improvements in the behavior patterns of children were also remarkable. Children were less antagonistic towards each other and their teachers once the School Breakfast Program began. Principals who had to spend most of their mornings breaking up fights said that even an occasional clash on the playground was the exception. Teachers noted a conspicuous improvement in classroom behavior, * See page 27. |