| ... to learn, grow and develop to their fullest potential. i ask for my colleagues' support and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the gentlewoman from california. ms. woolsey: mr. speaker, i'm pleased yield as much time as she she may csume to the gentlewoman from wisconsin, ms. moore. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman from wisconsin is recognized for as much time as she may consume. ms. moore: well, thank you, madam chair. mr. speaker, i rise today to express my strong support for the national school breakfast program, h.res. 210, and ask that i be allowed to revise and extend my remarks. this resolution really shows the importance of school breakfast programs and their positive impact on a child's overall academic performance. and, again, i want to thank the education and labor committee for bringing this resolution forward in honor of national school breakfast week. mr. speaker, every 35 seconds a child is born into poverty in the united states of america. in fact, as a nation, we've seen an increase in children living in poverty up to nearly three million children. with children representing a disproportion share of the poor in the united states as they're 25% of the total population but 35% of the poor in our population. and to the extent that the parents of children are responsible for their well-being, the unemployment rate which has risen from 7.6% to 8.1% and just last month, losing 651,000 jobs, 3.6 million jobs just in the last year, this has caused families to struggle even more to feed their children and they need to turn to schools for this much-needed assistance. i can tell you that a study done by the massachusetts general hospital in conjunction with harvard medical school concluded that children who are at nutritional risk have significantly poorer attendance, punks wallet and grades. but it also showed that these same parents that are responsible for taking care of them self-report that food insufficientsy means that their children have repeated a grade in school, they have lower scores in standardized tests, lower grades in math and more days tardy and absent from school. studies have also shown that students who fail to eat an equate breakfast increase their chances for being overweight than children who eat a healthy breakfast on a daily basis. fortunately, mr. speaker, these data show that providing breakfast in school has been able to improve attentiveness and academic performance while reducing tardyness and disciplinary referrals. i just want to mention that these school breakfasts must meet the nutrition standards of the dietary guidelines for americans which recommend no more than 30% of an individual's calories come from fat and will less than 10% from saturated fate -- saturated fat. in addition, breakfast must have 1/4 of the daily allowance for protein, iron, vitamin a, vitamin c and calories and i mention this because this might be the best meal the children have all day long. i can tell you, mr. speaker, that providing availability, accessibility and participation in the school breakfast program is one of the best ways to support the health and educational potential of children, particularly low-income children. in my own state of wisconsin, we saw a significant increase in school breakfast participation with a 25.3% growth rate and this is largely due to our efforts in our state to implement universal classroom breakfasts in most of our milwaukee public he will metropolitanry schools -- elementary schools. let me remind the body of this, mr. speaker, that though our country is in the midst of a tough economic time, no child in our community or across the country should ever go to school hungry. when our children are able to eat quality meals in the morning, we see improvements in math and reading scores as well as cognitive skills. if our children are going to be able to compete in a global environment, we need to do everything we can to make sure that they succeed. it's clear that there's no -- that there's a definite need for school breakfast programs, ... |