Letter from 52nd Street Elementary School in South L.A.

Just back from three days in California. The highlight was an early morning visit to the 52^nd Street Elementary School in South L.A. which has 850 students and last October switched to breakfast-in-the-classroom notwithstanding initial resistance on the part of teachers and others. Principal Jimenez explained that before breakfast-in-the-classroom there were 250 children with perfect attendance records, but that now there are 439 with perfect attendance and the only thing that’s changed is breakfast.  Talk about measureable outcomes!

I had never before seen “perfect attendance” used as a metric. But I do know that of the numerous national organizations such as Communities in Schools, America’s Promise, City Year and College Summit doing heroic work addressing the nation’s drop-out crisis, all will tell you that attendance is a leading indicator of graduation rates.   In the second grade classroom we visited our recent Deloitte report on the link between school breakfast and academic achievment came to life. @ http://www.nokidhungry.org/pdfs/school-breakfast-white-paper.pdf