Jacqui McGettigan spent the week of February vacation with her arm immobilized in a sling after falling and shattering her shoulder.
The arduous recovery from surgery hindered her ability to do much of anything, but McGettigan, the family student support liaison for the Winnisquam Regional School District, found that, one-handed, she could still pack treats into zippered bags and fasten them shut in preparation for the launch of a school breakfast initiative at the district’s two elementary schools.
The launch events the following week, headlined by some amateur theater, were a big success: McGettigan’s 35-year-old daughter lent her old prom dress to Sarah Skoglund, the district’s coordinator of wellness, who convincingly embodied a prepossessing princess encouraging students to eat breakfast at school.
With younger age groups, participation in school breakfast can be as simple as marketing. But when it comes to eradicating stigma, especially among disaffected teenagers who would be unfazed by inflatable dragons and damsels in distress, hunger relief advocates are going a step beyond and promoting a structural change to the school day.
“The issue is not the lack of food; it’s barriers to access, such as busy mornings, running late or simply not being hungry when they first get to school,” said Tricia Labelle, child nutrition manager at New Hampshire Hunger Solutions, an advocacy organization working to bolster school breakfast participation across the state. “When breakfast is offered after the bell, it becomes a normal part of the school day, just like lunch.”
Many schools designate a period of 10 or 15 minutes before the start of the school day for serving breakfast in the cafeteria. Breakfast after the bell, or second-chance breakfast, turns the traditional model on its head, offering an extended block of time during the school day when students can eat breakfast as they pass from class to class or take study halls.
Twelve schools are currently implementing second-chance breakfast in collaboration with NH Hunger Solutions, according to executive director Laura Milliken, including recent pilots in Milton and Somersworth. Nationally, New Hampshire places 46th in school breakfast participation, a ranking that reflects the proportion of students eligible for free breakfast who eat breakfast at school, according to the D.C.-based Food Research and Action Center.
Milliken’s organization interprets the state’s poor standing as a mandate to innovate and do better. The hunger relief organization provides technical assistance with marketing to parents, addressing teacher concerns about disruptions to the school day and facilitating grant applications. Schools tailor the second-chance breakfast model to fit their needs.
“The way that breakfast is offered typically is early in the morning, so it’s thought of as ‘poor kids’ breakfast’, and so once kids figure that out, they’d rather go hungry until lunch than participate,” Milliken said.
In Concord, Broken Ground School has seen a 7% increase in breakfast participation since it implemented a second-chance breakfast program with NH Hunger Solutions last year. That increase has carried over into the current school year, according to the district’s school nutrition director, Donna Reynolds.
Breakfast participation has always been on the lower side in Concord, she said, as students have sometimes needed to choose between eating in the cafeteria and enjoying extra recreational time outdoors in the morning. Reynolds still feels like the district isn’t capturing as many students as it could at breakfast, but the numbers show improvement.
“Initially, our numbers didn’t really change drastically, but things shifted towards the end of the school year, they did start to increase,” Reynolds said. “We were happy about that.”
At Winnisquam Regional High School in Tilton, traditional breakfast was not working as intended. Trevor Haggerty, the district’s food service director, saw a need after recognizing that only one-third of the student body was enrolled in the free-or-reduced lunch program.
Of the school’s 345 students, 90 receive free lunch and 26 receive reduced lunch. All of them automatically qualify for a free school breakfast, ensured by a mix of federal and state dollars, as well as comparably small contributions from schools’ general funds.
Yet in the fall of 2025, only 29 teens at Winnisquam Regional were availing themselves of that meal.
The path toward a solution began with inviting students to sample a variety of breakfast offerings, from egg bites to overnight oats. The students’ favorite, a banana-strawberry-blueberry smoothie, was showcased by food service staff at a celebration where McGettigan was recognized as a “school breakfast hero.”
McGettigan, whose role as a liaison typically encompasses working with 35 students throughout the district identified as homeless, knew that the success of a new school breakfast model would depend on the flexibility and utility it afforded students. She turned to a model NH Hunger Solutions had promoted across 58 other schools statewide: breakfast after the bell, documented by researchers at the University of Minnesota and St. Catherine University to successfully reduce barriers to school breakfast participation.
The student survey was her idea.
“It was funny, because they kept asking, ‘How much is it?’ And I’m like, ‘It’s free, this is a tasting, this is for you to tell us what you’d like to see at breakfast,'” McGettigan said.
In late January, they launched the program at Winnisquam Regional in earnest.
Until 9:45 each morning, students may filter into the cafetorium, take seats at a trench of circular tables between the kitchen and auditorium stage and have the freedom to eat a school breakfast. Participation has almost doubled since the fall: On average, the school now serves 48 breakfasts per day, having on one occasion served as many as 61.
Winnisquam Regional has seen the highest participation increase in the history of NH Hunger Solutions’ School Breakfast Challenge to date, according to Labelle.
“Those aren’t just numbers on the spreadsheet — they represent students who are no longer in class, distracted by hunger, and we’re ensuring no child starts their day on an empty stomach, providing them with the energy they need to stay fueled and focused,” said Haggerty, the district’s food service director.
The hope is someday to see second-chance breakfast offered at every school in New Hampshire.
“The reason you did it was to really banish the stigma and make breakfast for everyone,” Milliken said, turning to face McGettigan. “This school’s experience, we hope, will influence other schools to see that it’s possible, that it’s beneficial for the students.”
