CRANSTON – Alan Shawn Feinstein today offered to pick up half the state’s tab for the Rhode Island school breakfast program, if the state will pick up the other half.
Gov. Donald L. Carcieri has called for eliminating Rhode Island’s $600,000-per-year contribution – which spokesman Jeff Neal described as a “subsidy for cities and towns” – in order to reduce the state’s budget deficit.
But, Feinstein said in offering his novel challenge grant: “We can’t hurt our kids that way.”
School breakfasts have been lauded for helping fight hunger and improve students’ ability to concentrate.
“National research shows that access to a nutritious breakfast increases children’s academic performance and behavior at school,” Catherine B. Walsh, deputy director of Rhode Island KIDS COUNT told Providence Business News in an e-mail interview today. “Rhode Island has made great progress in improving access to the School Breakfast Program, and it is now provided in all 36 school districts.” She described the program as “an important resource for poor and low-income children” – especially now, “with so many Rhode Island families struggling to make ends meet.”
In Rhode Island, the program’s total cost statewide is about $6 million per year, of which the state pays just 10 percent. But that money goes toward program outreach and administration costs, and reducing costs for the urban core communities where low-income students are concentrated. Its loss would be a blow – and one that would fall hardest on the most vulnerable – local educators and activists say.
“I would hate to see this breakfast program so handicapped,” Feinstein told PBN in a telephone interview this afternoon. “I feel so badly for the kids … that’s one thing that shouldn’t be cut.”
More than half the schoolchildren in Rhode Island and nearby Massachusetts are members of the philanthropist’s Feinstein Junior Scholars, a school-based program that encourages students to do good deeds for others, Feinstein noted. Many of them join his yearly $1 million giveaway to fight hunger, raising and donating nonperishable goods to their local food pantry. Next month, the effort will embark on its 11th consecutive annual campaign.
The Feinstein Foundation – founded in 1991 by local philanthropist Alan Shawn Feinstein – is dedicated to alleviating hunger and encouraging community service. To learn more, visit (www.FeinsteinFoundation.org.
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