Third-grader Jimmy Reeves, wearing a Green Bay Packers sweatshirt and black jeans, sat quietly at the table eating cereal. About 15 other grade schoolers sat at nearby tables eating their own bagged meals.
“It’s not bad at all,” Jimmy said. “I can’t complain about breakfast.”
Oakton and Washington elementary schools on Monday started a state-funded breakfast program, which provides free breakfast to pupils who receive free lunch and lets those on reduced lunch buy breakfast for 15 cents. Other pupils can purchase breakfast for $1. Oakton’s program also has volunteers reading aloud during the breakfast period.
Q.T. Carter, Oakton’s principal, said the school has “a real need” to help its pupils.
“We included a state-funded program so we could feed more kids,” he said. “Before, with Books and Breakfast, we could feed a maximum of 50 kids. Now we can provide for as many as 100 kids.”
The Oakton and Washington programs are modeled after the National School Breakfast Program, which serves about 7.4 million children in more than 72,000 schools across the country. Two other elementary schools in District 65, Kingsley and Dewey, also have breakfast programs.
Four or five volunteers, including parents, teachers, school staff and local residents, oversee breakfast each day.
Evanella Fulliloven, a certified nurse and assistant, has two sons who attend Oakton. She helps coordinate the program and supervises breakfasts as a daily volunteer.
“This program is so important,” she said. “A lot of children don’t have breakfast at home. This improves their studying ability – just having something to eat.”
Besides providing meals, the program aims to benefit pupils in other ways.
“We teach them table manners and the importance of reading,” Fulliloven said. “We read them a book. It’s just like a family setting.”
The program runs from 7:30 a.m. until about 8:20 a.m. on school days in the Oakton auditorium. Several tables are set up, and the children set their coats and backpacks along the wall near the stage. Pupils are divided by grade level into reading groups in which they eat and listen to the book readings.
Before they sit down to eat, the children get their names marked off a list and receive a brightly colored paper bag with cold food inside.
Today, Jimmy said, “They gave me cereal, bagels and juice.”
His friend, Akeem Brackenridge, also a third-grader, corrected him.
“They gave me a bagel,” he said. “You got cereal.”
Breakfasts include milk and juice every day, as well as either cereal, a bagel with cream cheese, Pop Tarts or animal crackers.
“I’ve been doing this for four years now,” Fulliloven said. “I was just blessed with the work I do, that I can volunteer for one or two hours a day.”
And Fulliloven gets to know the children one Cheerio at a time.
“They see me at Dominick’s and say, ‘Hi, Miss Evenella! It’s the breakfast lady,'” she said.
The program, Carter said, has been “real successful.”
And Jimmy said he agrees.
“I’ve been here 30 days, and I had to sign up for the breakfast thing before I came,” Jimmy said. “When I first came, there were a lot of kids. I was terrified. (Now) I feel great.”
