Pupil nutrition: Breakfast After the Bell Program.

Existing law requires each school district or county superintendent of schools maintaining kindergarten or any of grades 1 to 12, inclusive, and, commencing with the 2019–20 school year, each charter school, to provide each needy pupil with one nutritionally adequate free or reduced-price meal during each schoolday. Existing law authorizes a school district or county office of education, in order to comply with that requirement, to use funds made available through any federal or state program the purpose of which includes the provision of meals to a pupil, including, among other programs, the federal School Breakfast Program. This bill would establish the Breakfast After the Bell Program to be administered by the State Department of Education, consisting of awarding grants, contingent upon a one-time appropriation by the Legislature in the annual Budget Act, to school districts, charter schools, and county offices of education for schoolsite breakfast after the bell programs that provide breakfast to pupils after the schoolday has begun. The bill would establish criteria for awarding grants and would require the department to collaborate with stakeholders in developing the grantmaking process. The bill would require the department to modify existing processes and systems used to collect schoolsite-level data about school nutrition programs in order to collect data about school breakfast service models at each schoolsite operating a school breakfast program.