HISD proposes free breakfast for everyone

Kids, if you're fans of questionable scrambled eggs, cafeteria-style biscuits, hash-brown sticks and those tiny cartons of milk, have we got some good news for you: All HISD students could get free school breakfasts every day under a proposal expected to be approved by the district's trustees next week. Breakfasts now cost 10 cents for students who qualify for reduced-priced meals and 90 cents for everyone else. Last year, nearly 70,000 HISD students ate breakfast at school, 14,000 of whom paid $1 million over the couse of the year for the meals. The others qualified for free meals because their families live below the poverty line.

District officials hope that waiving the cost of breakfast will encourage more kids to eat it. "Good nutrition is important to learning," HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra said. "Quiet frankly, young children who eat a good breakfast perform better academically." The proposal is expected to cost just over $17 million a year, $16 million of which would be covered by the federal government. The remaining $1.3 million would come from HISD's food service budget.

All of which makes us think: 90 cents for a full meal? That would barely even get us started on our current coffee-and-cigarette breakfast. You just don't realize how good you have it when you're in school!