Hawaiʻi schools can’t seem to give breakfast away

Nearly all of Hawaiʻi’s public schools participate in the federal School Breakfast Program, but only 43 percent of low-income students who qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches also take advantage of subsidized school breakfast.

Now a new report by the Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice aims to draw further attention to the issue by releasing a school-by-school participation analysis.

Hawaiʻi Appleseed’s report pivots off a national study released last year by the Food Research & Action Center, which ranked Hawaiʻi near the bottom of all states in terms of school breakfast participation among low-income students in the 2015-16 school year.