Donna Cartwright remembers getting a call from the Pennsylvania Hunger Action Center.

"I think they wanted to double-check the numbers," said the food service director of Farrell Area School District.

The numbers the center was interested in were the figures of breakfasts and lunches served daily at the school. In 2000-01, Farrell averaged 960 lunches a day, and 790 breakfasts.

"I think they were shocked," she said, of the ratio between lunches and breakfasts. "It's really unheard of."

The center named Farrell as the best district in the state in making breakfast a regular part of the school day.

The center promotes school breakfast programs, saying academic performance, school behavior and health are linked to the adequacy of a child's diet.

Ms. Cartwright, who works for food service contractor Aramark Corp., said students are more alert when they have full bellies, but the importance of breakfast can go much deeper.

"There are students that come in and you know some of them haven't eaten since they ate lunch the day before," she said. "For them, it's immensely important."

The importance is shared by all segments of the school community, which is a key to the program's success, Ms. Cartwright said.

"It's kind of rare to have the support I have here from the administration," she said. "Often the breakfast and lunch programs are looked on as a backdoor kind of thing. School districts are coming around to look on them as an important entity of their school districts."

All students at Farrell can receive lunch and breakfast for free, which Ms. Cartwright said adds to the success of the breakfast program. Students do not know who actually would qualify for free or reduced meals under federal guidelines.

"I think it entirely took the stigma away," she said. "Breakfast was looked at as something the poor kids do."

Demographically, 82 percent of students at Farrell, the poorest district in the state, qualify for free or reduced meals.

Eighty-nine percent of students eat breakfast at the school, while 98.5 percent eat lunch.

Ms. Cartwright said high school student participation in the breakfast program was lacking until the cafeteria started a grab-and-go breakfast program about two years ago.

High school students can take a breakfast bag to their first-period classrooms to eat. She noted students watch Channel 1 for the first 20 minutes of the morning, so eating breakfast does not interfere with the class.

Prior to the grab-and-go program, high school students were not willing to come to school an hour earlier for breakfast.

Ms. Cartwright, who also is a dietitian, said she expected opposition from teachers and maintenance people when grab-and-go was first proposed, but found cooperation.

"In the end, everybody involved looked on it and said, 'This is something we need.' Our participation went through the roof."

The center's Web site is at:

www.pahunger.org

You can e-mail Herald Staff Writer Joe Pinchot at:

jpinchot@sharonherald.com