Although a new report released this week by Florida Impact and the Food Research and Action Center claims more than half of eligible children in Sarasota, Charlotte and DeSoto County schools are missing out on the free or reduced-price school breakfast program, officials from the districts maintain they cannot force parents to make use of it.

According to the report, A Good Start for Learning: School Breakfast Participation in Florida, increasing participation in the School Breakfast Program so that 70 low-income children eat breakfast for every 100 who eat school lunch would feed an additional 264,637 low-income children statewide.
It would also bring
in an additional
$67 million in federal funding to the state.