The Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC) increases school breakfast participation in high-poverty school districts across Massachusetts by (1) providing one-time launch grants and technical assistance, (2) publishing an annual School Breakfast Report Card, and (3) hosting an annual Healthy Start Awards event celebration.

In our Commonwealth’s high-poverty communities, school breakfast participation dropped to 48% in SY 24/25 from the high of 58% in SY19/20. While 584,000 students participate in the free school lunch program every day, only 272,000 access free school breakfast. If lunch and breakfast participation rates were the same statewide, approximately 312,000 additional kids would eat breakfast every day.

Breakfast in the Classroom is proven to increase access to and participation in school breakfast. Benefits of the program include: lower absentee and tardy rates, fewer morning nurses visits and behavioral problems, and higher academic achievement. Since 2013, when Eos began this grant program, over 70,000 more high-need students are participating in breakfast each school day. Click here for a list of schools that have received BIC launch funding to date.