School Beat covers Balboa's Grab N Go program

Dana Waldow gives up an update on the efforts to provide healthy breakfasts to students at Balboa and other pilot schools in this week's School Beat column: Got Breakfast? Grab n Go Triples Participation at Balboa High School

San Francisco’s Balboa High School is in the second year of a pilot Grab n Go breakfast program which has succeeded in increasing participation in school breakfast among a population which is notoriously averse to starting the day with a healthy meal — teenagers. The convenience of Grab n Go makes it a winner with kids.

Last September she reported on the debut of this program in this blog post: Grab n Go Breakfast is a hit at Balboa High School. At the time they were hoping to feed 200 students per day. They've exceeded that goal by a long shot. This is great news not only for the Balboa community but for other schools as well. The success of Balboa's pilot program is already inspiring other schools to follow their lead.

The success of the grass-roots, bottom-up efforts to reform school food service is both remarkable and inspirational. The volunteers like Dana who have taken up this challenge have been faced by recalcitrant bureaucrats, unfavorable regulations from the district up through the feds, and the always-desperate scramble for budget dollars. Yet they are making a differnce and getting results in a remarkably short time frame, precisely because they are starting small and demonstrating an easily replicated forumla for success. Congratulations to all involved, especially Dana. How many other reform ideas could learn from this model?