National School Breakfast Week is March 2-6, 2026, highlighting the importance of a nutritious morning meal in helping students stay focused, energized, and ready to learn. Throughout the year, New England Dairy’s youth wellness team works with schools and nutrition professionals to ensure dairy remains a key component of school meals. Through resources, promotions, and menu innovation support, we help schools make breakfast both appealing and nutritious for students.
About School Breakfast
Not every child eats a healthy breakfast at home. Barriers such as limited food at home, lack of time, or not feeling hungry early in the morning mean many children arrive at school without the nutrition they need. The School Breakfast Program helps students overcome these challenges by providing nutritious meals before school or after the first bell.
Research shows children who participate in school breakfast are more likely to:
- Perform better in reading and math
- Score higher on standardized tests
- Have improved memory and concentration
- Maintain a healthy weight
- Get more of the important nutrients, like calcium, dietary fiber, folate, and protein
All students benefit when their classmates are well fed and prepared to learn.
How School Breakfast Supports Dairy Sales
New England Dairy supports initiatives and grants that increase access to all school meals, including breakfast. Schools must offer milk with breakfast, and many breakfast options also feature yogurt and cheese.
In 2025, schools across the country served 30 million lunches daily but only 15.7 million breakfasts. If breakfast participation matched lunch levels and half of those students chose milk, schools would serve an additional 3.8 million pounds of milk each day.
We work with schools in various ways to boost breakfast participation, add more dairy items to the menu, and improve the overall student dairy experience.
How New England Dairy Drives Participation in School Meals
Dairy Grants for Schools
For over 15 years, New England Dairy has provided grants that help schools increase meal participation and add more dairy foods to menus. These grants fund equipment and marketing resources for programs like smoothies, hot chocolate milk, bulk milk, and school breakfast expansion.
We know that when schools make breakfast more accessible by serving it in the classroom, from a hallway cart, or after the start of the day, participation increases. Our most common school breakfast grants fund kiosk carts that allow schools to serve in the foyer or other popular areas where students congregate before the school day begins.
Chill Out with Cold Milk
Milk tastes best when it’s kept at a cold temperature but keeping it consistently chilled can be challenging for schools. Our Chill Out with Cold Milk program includes training on how to keep milk cold in schools and a cold milk temperature kit.
Each year, schools can complete a milk temperature survey by checking temperatures before, during, and after service, and making corrections as needed. When they submit the survey, they are entered for a chance to win one of our cow-spot-wrapped milk coolers. We give a cooler to one winning school in each of our five New England states.
Smart Swaps
Smart Swaps is our newest recipe, menu, and training program designed to help schools reduce added sugar while serving dairy‑forward, student‑approved recipes.
In 2025, we worked with Dairy Management Inc. and dairy checkoff staff across the country to develop and test new recipes, create compliant sample menus, and record training videos to teach school staff how to make the recipes. We are currently working to promote the recipes in our region at conferences, through social media, and taste tests in select districts.
School breakfast is more than a meal; it’s an investment in students’ health, learning, and long-term success. When children start their day with nutritious foods, including dairy, they’re better prepared to focus and thrive.
With the support of dairy farmers, New England Dairy partners with schools to increase breakfast access, expand menu innovation, improve milk quality, and create more opportunities for students to enjoy dairy. Together, we’re helping schools overcome barriers, strengthen dairy demand, and ensure every child has the fuel they need to learn and grow.