Black Rock’s Free Breakfast

By: Miriam Berman and Cara Resnick

Class of 2026

What’s the issue?

The Governor of Pennsylvania recently decided that all students enrolled in public, private, and charter schools would be provided with a free breakfast this school year. Our school, Black Rock, now has free breakfast in the cafeteria every morning, Monday through friday.

Unfortunately, breakfast options aren't all healthy. The average breakfast is milk or juice, with a main course of something like a bagel, a muffin, a cereal cup, or a cheese sandwich, and a fruit.

How it helps

Even though the breakfast choices in our cafeteria aren’t all healthy, it helps many families. Some families have a hard time consistently providing breakfast for their children. Also, some students don’t have time to eat breakfast at home or they sleep in too late and can’t. According to the national institute of health breakfast is often considered the most important meal of the day. This new breakfast is providing a lot of help for a lot of people.

Getting to class

While sometimes it is a rush to get to class after eating breakfast, it’s hard to be late. The adults in the room tell you when it is 8:00 and when homeroom starts. And if you end up not having time to finish your breakfast, they will sign you in to make sure you are not marked absent.

Getting from the cafeteria to your homeroom won’t take that long if you take the right path. While breakfast is also a time when you can interact with one another, it is not a free time where you can goof off, you eat your breakfast and get to class.

Our experience

In order to find out if the breakfast was good we got it ourselves. The breakfast allowed us to sleep an extra 10 minutes in the morning, which actually makes a big difference. We had pancakes, milks, craisins, and a strawberry bagel bar. It was good but the chocolate milk made us feel sick to our stomachs. The pancakes were okay, but stuck to the paper platter a little. The lines were a little long but fast moving, two of the registers were closed which didn’t help us eat faster. We ate quickly and then headed up to our homeroom classes. Overall we enjoyed it.

Conclusion

Lots of people like breakfast at Black Rock, and it helps many families. Even though it has some cons it has more pros. The state of Pennsylvania made a wonderful decision and our school is better as a result.