Hearst Magazines chairwoman Cathie Black will become the first female chancellor of the city’s 1.1 million-student school system, replacing Joel I. Klein, who has served as chancellor since 2002. Klein is leaving to become an executive vice president at News Corp.

Bloomberg praised Black, a Chicago native who spent eight years at USA Today as president, publisher, board member and Gannett Co. executive vice president, as a “world-class manager.” The billionaire mayor, who often eschews traditional resumes for government posts, said Black’s business skills make her an ideal leader of educators and students.

“She understands that we have to make sure that our kids have the skill sets to partake in the great American dream,” Bloomberg said. “In the end, I picked somebody who I have confidence is the right person for this job at this time.”

The appointment will require a waiver from the state Department of Education because Black is not a certified teacher. The mayor said Klein will stay on until the end of the year.

Black attended parochial schools in Chicago and sent her own children to private boarding schools in Connecticut.

She has been on Fortune magazine’s “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” list and is the author of a book called “Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life).” She will be the first woman to lead the New York City school system.

At Hearst, she oversees titles including Esquire; Good Housekeeping; O, the Oprah magazine and Popular Mechanics.

Black’s appointment reflects Bloomberg’s view that success in business translates to similar achievements in public service.

“There is no one who knows more about the skills our children will need to succeed in the 21st century economy,” Bloomberg said at a City Hall news conference with Klein and Black.

Before Klein joined the Bloomberg administration, he was with media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG. Previously, he was an assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration. He headed the U.S. Justice Department‘s antitrust division for nearly four years, where his work included launching the case to break up Microsoft Corp.

Unlike Black, Klein grew up in New York City and attended public schools.

As chancellor, he often clashed with unions and with parent groups that complained of being denied a role in running the schools.

“Many parents will be glad to see Joel Klein leave as chancellor, who had no respect for their views or priorities,” said Leonie Haimson, who leads a parent advocacy group called Class Size Matters.

Ernest Logan, the president of the union that represents New York City principals, said Klein “had a rocky road” as chancellor but learned on the job.

Logan said he knows little about Black. “I’m now going to read her book,” he said.

Teachers union head Michael Mulgrew said: “I look forward to working with Ms. Black. As a teacher, I will help in any way I can to improve the education for the children of New York.”

Black told reporters she has had “limited exposure to unions” in her previous jobs.

Klein was appointed chancellor after Bloomberg won control of the school system and disbanded the Board of Education. Bloomberg and Klein have touted the progress that students have made under their watch, but the state Education Department said last summer that rising scores on standardized tests had been overstated because the tests had become too easy.

Black will likely serve no longer than the three years remaining in Bloomberg’s term.

“She’s had a career, so maybe she can have the ability to devote the next three years to public service,” Bloomberg said.

Publishing exec named new NYC schools chancellor

The American Opportunity Tax Credit was included in the $814 billion economic stimulus bill Obama signed last year. He had proposed making the tax credit permanent in his 2011 budget proposal, but Congress has not acted on his request.

Obama appeared in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday with three families who have taken advantage of the tax credit. Obama says the credit is worth $10,000 over four years and will help families invest in their children’s future.

A Treasury Department analysis says 12.5 million people used the credit last year, for an average of about $1,700.

Obama urges Congress to make college tax credit permanent

It’s a claim made by a charter school leader in the education documentary Waiting for Superman, which places much of the blame for bad schools nationwide on union rules that protect incompetent teachers.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on national television last week that he would overhaul the way city teachers are granted tenure, linking their advancement to improving student test scores.

“Just as we are raising the bar for our students through higher standards, we must also raise the bar for our teachers and principals — and we are,” Bloomberg said.

But city teachers say that if bad teachers have won tenure protection it’s the fault of the administrators who gave it to them.

“We don’t make that decision. Whoever the principal is makes that decision,” said LezAnne Edmond, a Manhattan high school teacher with 15 years of experience.

Teacher tenure has its roots in academic tenure, which was intended to protect academic freedom; once granted, professors are rarely fired. Tenure rules for K-12 teachers vary from state to state, with some operating more like universities and others that offer no stronger protection than job security laws that prevent people from being fired without cause.

States including California, Florida and Colorado have passed or proposed legislation to change tenure laws in hopes of securing education funding under President Barack Obama‘s “Race to the Top” program.

New York City teachers can win tenure after three years. Once they are granted tenure they cannot be fired without an administrative hearing. What the teachers union calls due process, Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein call a system that has protected incompetence.

The issue gained prominence with the Sept. 24 release of “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” opening to wider release on Friday. The documentary from “An Inconvenient Truth” director Davis Guggenheim suggests that kids receive a superior education in charter schools without unions.

NBC‘s Sept. 27-28 education summit covered much of the same ground. Bloomberg used a 15-minute MSNBC segment to announce a tenure crackdown.

“We’ll do more to support teachers and reward great teaching, and that includes ending tenure as we know it,” he said. Bloomberg said principals must start denying tenure unless their students have made two years of progress on state tests.

Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, responded that principals can already deny tenure “for any reason” and that teachers “would welcome an objective tenure-granting process based on agreed-upon standards.”

But the union has opposed using state test scores — the city’s preferred benchmark — to measure teacher performance.

City Department of Education spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said the union is being disingenuous.

“On one hand, they seem to be blaming principals for too many teachers getting tenure,” she said in an e-mail. “On the other hand, they don’t want principals to take into account student performance when making tenure decisions.”

This year, 3.7% of teachers who reached the end of their three-year probationary period were denied tenure, up from 2.3% the year before. Another 7.2% saw their probation extended by a year.

Ernest Logan, president of the union representing New York City principals, said his members take student achievement into account.

“I don’t think people are just granting people tenure because they’ve been there three years,” Logan said.

Veteran city teachers say they need tenure for job security and to protect the First Amendment rights it was designed to safeguard.

“I need tenure to speak out,” said Arthur Goldstein, a union chapter leader at Francis Lewis High School in Queens.

Goldstein said he has complained publicly about overcrowding and other issues.

“I’m standing up for the kids of Francis Lewis High School and I absolutely need tenure,” he said.

Katharine Dawson, who retired last summer after 12 years as a city schoolteacher, said tenure “protects you from favoritism, it protects you from all kinds of things.”

Asked about tenure protecting bad teachers, she said, “Maybe there’s two bad teachers per school. Is it worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater?”

One teacher whom Bloomberg would like to throw out is Melissa Petro, whose essay about using Craigslist to sell herself as a prostitute was published in the Huffington Post on Sept. 7, the same day she was awarded tenure by the principal of her Bronx elementary school.

Bloomberg demanded that Petro be pulled from the classroom, but she has tenure and cannot be fired without due process. She has been assigned to an office job pending an investigation. A phone number for Petro could not be found.

NYC takes aim at teachers’ ‘tenure for breathing’

The selection of a new nickname is the culmination of a sometimes painful few months in this town of 2,745. Under a new state law meant to eliminate race-based nicknames, logos and mascots, a complaint prompted the Kewaunee School District to drop the “Indians” name that had been in use here since 1936.

“This has been a tough time,” says Sandi Christman, who chaired a committee that got the whole community involved in the selection of a new name and mascot. “It’s like losing a friend.”

To ease the sting, the school board decided to seek suggestions from students and residents. Almost 200 ideas were submitted. The 13-member committee, which included four students, narrowed the list to six: River Bandits, Storm, Cougars, Hawks, Knights and Huskies.

At least 1,400 votes were cast in community-wide balloting that chose the two finalists, River Bandits and Storm. The winner was chosen by the district’s 1,030 students. The district has few Native American students.

Some people aren’t ready to give up the old name. A popular shirt for sale here reads, “Once an Indian, always an Indian.”

Law first of its kind

A state law that took effect in May allows school district residents to lodge complaints against race-based names. The Department of Public Instruction holds a hearing before the state superintendent decides whether to bar the usage. Districts can argue that a name isn’t discriminatory if they have a tribe’s approval.

In June, retired Kewaunee teacher Marsha Beggs Brown filed a complaint. The Kewaunee School Board intended to fight it, says President Brian Vogeltanz, but changed its mind on the eve of the hearing and decided to voluntarily drop the name. The district has a year to remove Indians signs from school premises.

“Respect for all people — that was my motivation,” says Beggs Brown. “There’s just no refuting that these names harm children.” Some people here support her decision, she says, but “I’ve also gotten a couple of anonymous letters and anonymous phone calls, and there are people who don’t speak to me.”

In 2005 the NCAA prohibited the use of Native American nicknames, mascots and imagery in postseason competition. Wisconsin’s law is the first of its kind.

Department of Public Instruction spokesman Patrick Gaspar says it has received three complaints. Osseo-Fairchild schools were ordered to drop their Chieftains nickname. A complaint against the Mukwonago Chieftains is pending. There’s been no complaint in Auburndale, but it is forming a committee to look into changing its Apache nickname.

Last week Kewaunee defeated the Mishicot Indians. Mishicot has permission from Michigan’s Hannahville Potawatomi to use the name because the town is named for a chief from that tribe.

Barbara Munson, chair of a Wisconsin Indian Education Association task force on mascots and logos, says about 30 school districts use Indian names and about 30 dropped them voluntarily. The issue, she says, “is a failure of mainstream American culture to deal with stereotyping.”

Mixed reaction

Jesse Steinfeldt, an Indiana University psychology professor who has studied the effects of the nicknames and mascots, says they create “a racially hostile education environment that … can affect the self-esteem of Native American kids.”

Councilman Brandon Stevens of the Oneida Nation, the tribe closest to Kewaunee, wishes the Legislature had banned all Indian nicknames. But, he says, “as long as there’s debate, there’s an avenue for education.”

People here say it’s hard to give up the Indians tradition. “People are upset,” says Tim Selner, 37, a truck driver and 1992 graduate. “It’s always been part of us.”

The use of Indian imagery and names “is a tribute,” says Shirley Brusky, who left school to marry a year before she would have graduated in 1955. “We were proud to be called an Indian.”

Kewaunee senior Libbie Delebreau, 18, says the change is necessary “if the Indians feel it is offensive … but it’s sad that we have to lose our mascot in my last year of high school.”

She hopes River Bandits will be the new name, but says, “We will be cheering on whoever we are.”

Wis. law lets residents challenge race-based mascots

Education reformers have long called for U.S. kids to log more time in the classroom so they can catch up with their peers elsewhere in the world, but resistance from leisure-loving teenagers isn’t the only reason there is no mass movement to keep schoolchildren in their seats.

Such a change could cost cash-strapped state governments and local school districts billions of dollars, strip teachers of a time-honored perk of their profession, and irk officials in states that already bridle at federal intrusion into their traditional control over education.

“If you extend the school year for, say, five days, you’re paying for another week of salaries, another week of utilities and another week of fuel for, in South Carolina, 5,700 school buses,” said Jim Foster, a spokesman for the South Carolina Department of Education.

Obama told NBC‘s Matt Lauer on the Today show Monday that the U.S. school year is too short.

“The idea of a longer school year, I think, makes sense,” he said. He did not specify how long that school year should be, but said U.S. students attend classes, on average, about a month less than children in most other advanced countries.

U.S. schools through high school offer an average of 180 instruction days per year, according to the Education Commission of the States. That compares to an average of 197 days for lower grades and 196 days for upper grades in countries with the best student achievement levels, including Japan, South Korea, Germany and New Zealand.

Many education experts say American kids should spend more time in school.

“There’s a growing awareness that American kids are being shortchanged academically by the short school day and the short school year,” said Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at New York University.

Today’s American kids have a long summer vacation because previous generations needed the summer off to work on family farms.

Now researchers say the tradition causes a “summer learning loss” as kids put aside the books for the summer. The problem hits low-income students especially hard. A Johns Hopkins University study found that disadvantaged kids fall back during the summer break, while better-off kids hold steady or continue to learn.

Charter schools that aim to bring low-income students up to grade level, such as the KIPP academies and the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City, generally offer a longer school year and a longer school day.

In most cases the charter schools have leeway to set their own schedules, in part because their teachers are not covered by union contracts.

At traditional public schools where teachers and other employees are usually represented by unions, lengthening the school day or the school year would be subject to collective bargaining, and more hours would cost more money.

“It has to be negotiated, and it takes money,” said Janet Bass, a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Teachers. “Right now teachers and all other school staff are compensated based on the number of hours they work.”

Some states embrace the idea. In Massachusetts, the state issues grants to districts with plans to constructively lengthen instructional class time, said Kathy Christie, chief of staff at the Education Commission of the States. Obama’s Education Department already is using competitions among states for curriculum grant money through its “Race to the Top” initiative.

“The federal carrots of additional money would help more states do it or schools do it in states where they don’t have a state grant process,” Christie said.

But the federal budget is hard-up, too. And while many educators and parents believe students would benefit from more quality learning time, the idea is not universally popular.

Texas already forbids school from starting before the fourth Monday of August, a provision designed to save money on utility bills and increase business for tourist destinations and other summer attractions.

“Ultimately the states, not the federal government, should have the final word on this and other public school decisions,” said Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry.

In Kansas, sporadic efforts by local districts to extend the school year at even a few schools have been met by parental resistance, said state education commissioner Diane DeBacker.

“The community was just not ready for kids to be in school all summer long,” DeBacker said. “Kids wanted to go swimming. Their families wanted to go on vacation.”

In some states, the school year already starts well before Labor Day and in others nearly stretches to the Fourth of July.

Parents are similarly divided.

Parent Irene Facciolo in Montpelier, Vt., said kids need the summer break and learn while they’re away from school.

“I really feel like they need the time to regenerate,” she said.

But Laura Spencer of Orlando, says she would rather have her 10-year-old daughter learning than hanging out.

“Summer is a lost opportunity,” said Spencer, who believes having kids out of school for three to four months makes an already flawed education system worse.

Associated Press reporters Erica Werner in Washington; Tom Breen in Raleigh, N.C.; Donna Gordon Blankinship in Seattle; April Castro in Austin, Texas; Alan Scher Zagier in Columbia, Mo.; and Lisa Rathke in Montpelier, Vt., contributed to this story.

Goodbye summer? Not as cost muffles calls for more school

Addressing a small group in an Albuquerque family’s front yard, Obama shifted from his recent focus on the economy, which has run headlong into the grim reality of continued high unemployment. Instead, five weeks ahead of midterm elections that could turn into a Democratic bloodletting, the president told voters to think about education when they head to the polls.

“Who’s going to prioritize our young people to make sure they’ve got the skills they need to succeed?” the president said.

“Nothing’s going to be more important in terms of our long-term success.” Obama argued that Republicans would cut education spending to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

Later in the day, Obama was heading to a big rally at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he hopes to replicate the raucous, youthful, big-stage events for which he became famous in the 2008 presidential campaign. Democrats will host hundreds of watch parties nationwide, and Obama will hold other campus rallies before Nov. 2 to warn young voters that the “hope and change” they embraced two years ago is at risk if Republicans sweep the midterm elections.

The president is aiming to close the enthusiasm gap that pollsters say separates discouraged liberal voters from energized conservatives who might lift Republicans to huge gains in congressional and gubernatorial races.

But Obama got a quick reminder from his audience of about 40 in Albuquerque that education might not be at the top of the agenda for recession-weary voters.

“If we don’t have homes to go to, what good is education?” one man asked.

A high school principal read a letter that he said was from a class in his school.

“What assurance will we have that we will be rewarded for good work?” the students asked. “There seems to be less money that banks lend our families, and most of all no jobs.”

The president acknowledged the anxiety of the younger generation.

“They’re growing up in the shadow of a financial crisis that we hadn’t seen in our lifetime,” he said, arguing his administration has sought to save jobs for teachers and others by closing tax loopholes, and is working to making it easier for kids to attend college.

Republican leaders, Obama said, “fought us tooth and nail … That’s the choice that we’ve got in this election.”

The event at the stucco home of Andy and Etta Cavalier in a small farming community south of Albuquerque comes as Obama tests out a relatively new format of backyard visits that give him time to explain his policies in cozy, unhurried settings. He’s coupling those with college campus rallies in four states Tuesday and Wednesday, trying to tackle Democrats’ two biggest needs: to pump enthusiasm into young supporters who may stay at home this fall, and to persuade undecided voters that Republican alternatives are unacceptable.

In a magazine interview, Obama admonished Democratic voters, saying it would be “inexcusable” and “irresponsible” for unenthusiastic Democrats to sit out the elections because the consequences could be a squandered agenda for years.

“People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up,” Obama told Rolling Stone magazine in an interview being published Friday. Making change happen is hard, he said, and “if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”

Obama wants Democratic loyalists to be less apologetic and more forceful in asserting that he and the Democratic-controlled Congress are trying to move the country forward and Republicans would return to the policies of former President George W. Bush.

Obama: Education key to economic success

Each fellowship comes with $500,000 over the next five years.

Since 1981 the foundation has annually selected 20-25 fellows to receive the no-strings-attached award, with the hopes of encouraging freedom of creativity and future contributions.

“We’re looking for creativity, brilliance and potential,” says foundation President Robert Gallucci.

The foundation selects hundreds of nominators to recommend possible fellows, which are narrowed down and finally selected by a group of professionals in a variety of fields.

Some fellows work in fields of math, science and engineering:

• Amir Abo-Shaeer, a physics teacher at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, Calif.

• Kelly Benoit-Bird, a marine biologist and professor at Oregon State University.

• Drew Berry, a biomedical animator at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia.

• Carlos D. Bustamante, a population geneticist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, Calif.

• John Dabiri, a biophysicist and associate professor at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.

• Michal Lipson, an optical physicist and associate professor at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

• Nergis Mavalvala, a quantum astrophysicist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

• Marla Spivak, an entomologist and professor a the University of Minnesota, St. Paul

Abo-Shaeer is the first high school teacher to be a MacArthur Fellow. He created project-based engineering classes and curriculum for his high school.

“Project-based learning is something kids can’t get anywhere else. When they come here, it’s experienced-based learning they can’t get from the Internet,” says Abo-Shaeer.

Other fellows work in areas of the arts, the economy and many other fields:

• Nicholas Benson, a stone carver and owner and creative director of The John Stevens Shop, Newport, R.I.

• Matthew Carter, a typographer and co-founder and principal of Carter & Cone Type, Cambridge, Mass.

• David Cromer of Chicago, a theater director.

• Shannon Lee Dawdy, anthropologist and assistant professor at the University of Chicago.

• Annette Gordon-Reed, an American historian and law professor at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Mass.

• Yiyun Li, a fiction writer and assistant professor at the University of California, Davis.

• Jason Moran, a jazz pianist and composer of New York.

• Carol Padden, a sign language linguist and communications professor at the University of California, San Diego.

• Jorge Pardo, an installation artist of Los Angeles.

• Sebastian Ruth, a violist, music educator and founder and executive artistic director of Community MusicWorks of Providence

• Emmanuel Saez, an economist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

• David Simon, author, screenwriter and producer, Baltimore.

• Dawn Song, a computer security specialist and associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

• Elizabeth Turk of Santa Ana, Calif., a sculptor.

• Jessie Little Doe Baird, indigenous language preservationist and co-founder and director of W?pan?ak Language Reclamation Project of Mashpee, Mass.

Padden, who is deaf, studies the linguistics of sign language, various types of sign language and how sign language is developed.

She said, through a sign language translator via telephone, that she could use her fellowship funding to create a fun artificial sign language — “something of the Star Trek line.”

MacArthur genius grants: Teacher, jazz pianist among 23 winners

Compared with a high school graduate, the typical four-year college graduate who enrolled in a public university at age 18 has earned enough by then to compensate for being out of the labor force for four years and for borrowing enough to pay tuition and fees without grant aid.

Unemployment rates have increased faster among people with a high school diploma but no college degree, the report says, and college grads are more likely to exercise, volunteer, vote and read to their kids, and are less likely to be obese or smoke.

“Questions have intensified about whether going to college is worthwhile,” says Education Pays, released by College Board Advocacy & Policy Center. “For the typical student, the investment pays off very well over the course of a lifetime — even considering the expense.”

This is the third such report since 2004; the 2008 report was criticized by Charles Miller, former chair of a higher-education commission under President Bush, as being a “cheerleader” instead of giving “a clear and accurate picture of the dangerous financial deterioration of our higher-education system.”

This year’s report says the solution is not to advise students to skip college but to provide better information and advice — and more generous financial support.

“If it wasn’t clear before, it should be abundantly clear now that a college graduate is far more competitive in today’s workplace,” College Board president Gaston Caperton says.

Among findings:

•Median full-time earnings with a bachelor’s degree in 2008 were $55,700, $21,900 more than high school graduates.

•The unemployment rate for college graduates rose from 2.6% to 4.6% between 2008 and 2009, while it rose for high school graduates from 5.7% to 9.7%.

•In 2008, 8% of high school graduates 25 and older lived in households getting food stamps, vs. just over 1% of those with a bachelor’s degree.

•14% of male high school graduates earned as much as or more than $65,800, the median earnings of male four-year college graduates in 2008, and about 20% of male four-year college graduates earned less than $39,000, the median earnings of high school graduates.

Estimated cumulative earnings:

Age	High School Graduate	Associate Degree	Bachelor’s Degree
18	$22,724	$0	$0
19	$44,787	$0	$0
20	$66,207	$23,683	$0
21	$87,003	$46,677	$0
22	$107,194	$69,001	$25,718
23	$126,796	$90,675	$50,687
24	$145,827	$111,717	$74,929
25	$170,661	$141,208	$109,573
26	$194,772	$169,839	$143,208
27	$218,181	$197,636	$175,863
28	$240,908	$224,624	$207,568
29	$262,973	$250,826	$238,348
30	$284,395	$276,751	$268,232
31	$305,193	$301,921	$297,246
32	$325,386	$326,358	$328,274
33	$344,990	$350,083	$358,398
34	$364,024	$373,117	$387,644
35	$385,122	$398,802	$424,613
36	$405,607	$423,738	$460,504
37	$425,494	$447,949	$495,350
38	$444,803	$471,454	$529,182
39	$463,548	$494,274	$562,027
40	$481,748	$516,430	$593,917
41	$499,418	$537,941	$624,877
42	$516,574	$558,825	$654,936
43	$533,229	$579,101	$684,119
44	$549,399	$598,786	$712,452
45	$565,622	$619,403	$740,133
46	$581,372	$639,420	$767,008
47	$596,663	$658,854	$793,100
48	$611,509	$677,722	$818,433
49	$625,923	$696,040	$843,027
50	$639,917	$713,824	$866,905
51	$653,503	$731,091	$890,088
52	$666,693	$747,855	$912,595
53	$679,499	$764,130	$934,447
54	$691,933	$779,932	$955,662
55	$703,901	$795,167	$975,834
56	$715,521	$809,959	$995,419
57	$726,802	$824,320	$1,014,434
58	$737,755	$838,262	$1,032,894
59	$748,388	$851,799	$1,050,817
60	$758,712	$864,941	$1,068,218
61	$768,735	$877,700	$1,085,112
62	$778,467	$890,088	$1,101,514
63	$787,915	$902,115	$1,117,438
64	$797,087	$913,791	$1,132,898

Cost of college: Grads break even by age 33

When science teacher Sue Aronofsky opens the door of her classroom, kids stream into the hallway. “You go around, you get your stuff, and you tell the lady thank you,” she says.

Students eat at their desks as announcements drone from the public-address system. After a brief pause to pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag and toss empty milk cartons, Aronofsky’s freshmen turn to examining pill bugs under magnifying glasses. Time: 8:45 a.m.

The same scene occurs all over the 1,034-student school. Last year, when Centennial served free breakfast in the cafeteria each morning before the start of classes, fewer than 100 students showed up to eat daily. On this morning four days into the new year, with breakfast delivered to classrooms, 864 students have been fed.

That many children eating school breakfast is rare. Although the number of hungry children in the U.S. is rising, fewer than half of the kids who could be eating a free or low-cost breakfast at school are getting one.

In Pueblo, school officials take a counterintuitive approach: They offer free breakfast to all children regardless of income, so no one is embarrassed to be eating it. In most schools here, breakfast is served right in the classrooms. As a result, 76% of Pueblo’s needy kids eat school breakfast. That’s more than any state and almost every big city, according to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), which tracks participation in school meal programs.

Now, states such as Colorado and Florida, anti-hunger groups and congressional lawmakers from both parties are pushing schools to follow programs such as Centennial’s — an effort not only to improve students’ performance in school but to combat rising hunger in tough economic times.

The number of U.S. households that can’t consistently put food on the table rose to 17 million, or 14.6%, in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the highest level in a decade. The use of food stamps is at an all-time high, and so is the percentage of children receiving free or reduced-price school meals, which rose from 59.3% in 2007 to 62.5% in 2009.

The low number of needy kids eating breakfast at school “is a tremendous concern,” says Gary Davis, founder of the Got Breakfast? Foundation, which gives schools grants to increase breakfast participation. “It’s a message that really has to be heard: that there’s just a simple way that we can improve our society.”

The cost of school breakfast for needy kids, such as the cost of their lunches, is eligible for federal reimbursement. Most U.S. schools — 86% — offer it. But of the nearly 19 million children who eat a free or reduced-price lunch at school, only 8.8 million also come for breakfast, according to FRAC.

Efforts to change this are underway:

•In Colorado, where only 39% of needy kids eat a school breakfast, Democratic Gov. Bob Ritter launched an effort in July to get school districts to increase participation in breakfast with the help of Share Our Strength, a national advocacy group that fights childhood hunger.

•In Florida, a new law this year requires free breakfast in all schools where 80% of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals.

•In Congress, renewal of the Child Nutrition Act would allow start-up grants for universal free breakfast programs. The bill also would make it easier for high-need schools to serve universal meals by allowing more ways for schools to make kids eligible for free and low-cost meals. The renewal, postponed from 2009, passed the Senate in August with $4.5 billion in increased funding. A version with $8 billion in additional funding awaits action in the House. The current law expires Sept. 30.

“There are just a lot of kids whose families are not going to be able to supply all their meals for them,” says Bill Shore, co-founder of Share Our Strength. “The impact (on hunger) of adding 50,000 kids to the school breakfast program dwarfs anything else we could do.”

‘It’s the right thing to do’

In Pueblo — a city of 103,000 that is 104 miles south of Denver — 72% of schoolchildren qualify for free and reduced-price meals. Under U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, a family of four with an annual income of less than $40,793 can receive school meals at a reduced price of no more than 30 cents. A family of four with income less than $28,665 is eligible for free school meals.

But in Pueblo, breakfast is served free to everyone in all 38 schools. In 24 schools, children are served breakfast in the classroom or, if the food carts can’t be hauled upstairs, kids grab breakfast at the front door on their way to class.

Jill Kidd, Pueblo’s nutrition services director, started serving breakfast in class in 1998 in four of the district’s poorest schools, and she has been expanding the classroom breakfast program ever since.

“It’s simple,” she says. “And it’s the right thing to do for kids.”

Pueblo serves a burrito, French toast or other hot breakfast four times a week, and offers cereal every day, including an unsweetened variety such as Cheerios. (Centennial students got only sweet cereals the first week this school year because adding the school to the in-class breakfast program initially stretched district supplies, Kidd says.) Cheyenne Roque, 15, a freshman at Centennial, grabbed the high-fiber doughnut from the breakfast cart. Her mother works at a craft supply store and her dad at a discount store. The family includes three kids, her grandmother and uncle. Food stamps help the family make it through the month, but school breakfast and lunch make the groceries at home go further.

“That’s why we have more food at home, because we eat breakfast and lunch at school,” she says.

Removing the stigma

Getting more kids to eat breakfast at school is key to achieving President Obama’s campaign pledge to end childhood hunger by 2015, according to groups such as Share Our Strength and Feeding America, a food bank network. The best way to do so, they say, is with a program like Centennial’s that feeds rich and poor kids alike.

In a 2001 U.S. Department of Agriculture pilot program in 79 schools, offering free breakfast to all kids in the cafeteria increased the number of students who ate breakfast in school from 19% to 28%. At schools that served free breakfast in the classroom, participation rose to 65%.

Feeding free breakfast to students who can afford to pay avoids the stigma for students who can’t but don’t want everyone to know. Serving breakfast in class means kids don’t have to get there early to be fed, Kidd and other school nutrition directors say. Bus schedules, parents’ work schedules, and, for high school students, the desire to sleep as late as possible make getting to school early for breakfast difficult.

Andrea Ayala, 28, an unemployed single mom of four, grew up in Pueblo eating breakfast at school when it was for poor kids only. She and her four siblings “always had to go to the cafeteria and be there before school. … My mom made us,” Ayala says.

Now her four kids eat breakfast at school along with everyone else, she says: “They see everybody else getting what they’re getting.”

Feeding more children breakfast is an easy pitch to budget-squeezed school districts because if enough of their kids are eligible for low- or no-cost meals, federal reimbursement can cover the cost of the entire program. The more breakfasts they serve, the more federal reimbursement they get and the greater economy of scale they enjoy. The USDA spent $12.7 billion on school breakfast and lunch last year. Reimbursement to schools for breakfast range from 26 cents for a child who pays full price to $1.74 for a free breakfast in a high-poverty school.

More than half of all students in Pueblo eat breakfast at school. The program pays for itself and doesn’t require any money from the district, Kidd says.

“We aren’t asking taxpayers to feed every kid a free breakfast at school,” says Courtney Smith, director of Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry program. “We are saying that in very high-need areas, a way to effectively provide breakfast at school is through a universal breakfast program.”

Part of an education

In Pueblo, Kidd has converted schools to free in-class breakfast one principal at a time. Administrative reluctance is typically the biggest obstacle to classroom breakfast, its proponents say.

Since the federal No Child Left Behind law made performance on state tests critical to schools, the pressure to maximize class time is intense. “As a principal, you have to guard instruction time,” says Tharyn Mulberry, Centennial’s principal. When he first mentioned classroom breakfast, his faculty “did not like it,” he says. “They did not want the disruption of it.”

First, Kidd arranged to serve breakfast in class last year on the days when Centennial students took the all-important state assessment tests. Then she told Mulberry, “If it’s good for test days, it’s good for every day.”

Studies indicate that children learn better when they aren’t hungry. Kids who eat breakfast right before taking tests score higher than kids who ate hours before. Results of pilot programs in the city of Milwaukee, statewide in Maryland and elsewhere show that serving breakfast in class results in less tardiness, less disruptive behavior and fewer visits to the nurse.

“We’re a little obsessive about it at this point,” Kidd says. She has pitched one principal on the idea of in-class breakfast so many times — without success — “if I mention it again, he’s going to kill me.”

At Park View Elementary, on Pueblo’s east side, where all 418 students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, breakfast is served only in the cafeteria, not the classroom.

“I don’t feel that that truly is the best use of the instruction part of the day,” Principal Shiela Perez says. “By the time that it’s been delivered, by the time they’ve been given the opportunity to eat and everything’s been cleared up, that can drag out … into 45 minutes of the day.”

Instead, children must arrive by 7:40 a.m. to eat, 20 minutes before class begins. A little more than one-third of the students — 37% — eat breakfast at school. “If they walk in at 7:55 they’re not going to get turned away,” Perez says. “We’re just trying to encourage them to get here.”

Like it or not, making sure children get fed has become central to schools’ mission.

Feeding hungry kids “is a given. We’re in many cases the biggest social support for our children,” says Stephanie Garcia, president of the Pueblo school board. “This is a necessary part of the educational process.”

For Kidd, the next step in helping hungry children is to move beyond the school day. Like other schools, Pueblo has a program that sends bags of food home with needy kids on Friday to get them through the weekend.

Kidd would like to add an after-school supper program, and start farmers markets at schools located in “food deserts,” neighborhoods without food stores.

She is also now in charge of the 10% of Pueblo students who are homeless. It’s a job Kidd feels highlights the difference a school can make in a kid’s life, especially if it comes with decent meals.

“We’re the safe time in their day. We’re the good time in their day,” she says. “If we can feed them and love them, maybe we can make the other 16 hours more tolerable.”

New push to fight kids’ hunger starts at school

Some are taking advantage of good sales during a sluggish economy, while others, like Columbia University, are continuing a practice they’ve done for decades, buying even if the price isn’t discounted.

The University of Dayton last year acquired the 115-acre world headquarters of technology company NCR Corp for the fire sale price of $18 million after buying 50 acres from the company for three times the per-acre price in 2005. And the University of Delaware last year bought a 272-acre former Chrysler auto plant for $24 million.

The schools are banking on future growth to make their purchases good investments. In the interim, many are leasing the properties they’re not using until they need them.

It’s good that colleges are looking years or even decades ahead, but investing in real estate can be risky, academic research analyst Jane Wellman said.

“People who just lost their shirts in the last real estate crash know the risk of real estate as an investment portfolio,” Wellman said. Colleges “are banking that now is the low point in real estate, and it may not be.”

For years, Columbia bought land wherever it could, amassing more than 17 acres on Manhattan’s Upper West Side between 2002 and 2009. Construction has begun on a multibillion-dollar expansion that would build new housing, laboratories, open space and tree-lined sidewalks.

University President Lee Bollinger said it won’t be finished for at least 30 years. And while some of the space has been dedicated to specific departments, Bollinger said he’s intentionally not deciding how the rest of the buildings will be used.

Dan Fasulo, a managing director for real estate research firm Real Capital Analytics, says many colleges are jumping at new opportunities to buy land cheaply since the economic slump.

Some schools say the economic downturn drove prices so low that it was cheaper to buy land with existing buildings now than it would be to construct new ones later.

University of Dayton President Daniel Curran thought he got “the deal of a lifetime” five years ago, when the Ohio university bought 50 acres from NCR Corp. for $25 million. Then he got a better offer: the company’s expansive world headquarters property — complete with a moat and a mini golf course — for $18 million.

The former Chrysler Group LLC plant the University of Delaware bought won’t be completely built out for 50 years, said Executive Vice President Scott Douglass. Since nearly a quarter of it has no specific plans, it may be used for scientific testing, Douglass said.

At Columbia, where tuition and living expenses are soaring in New York, junior Jose Robledo said although he’d like his university to put more money toward financial aid, it’s more important for it to expand and try to improve — even if he’s not around to see it.

Fasulo offered colleges some words of caution, though, saying land investment in a rural area is riskier than near a place like Columbia, in one of America’s most desirable real estate markets.

“From a market perspective, there would be a lot less risk worrying about surplus property in a place like Manhattan than if you were out in the woods somewhere,” he said. “Let’s say enrollment falls in half, you can sell it off as a condominium.”

And Wellman, executive director of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability, a nonprofit studying college costs, noted that even when a building isn’t being used for academics, a university still has to pay to maintain it.

“You’re going to have to keep raising money and getting more money every year just to keep the hamster running in the cage,” she said. “They’re perpetuating a very expensive cost structure, and I don’t think every school can maintain that.”

Colleges buy land without knowing how they’ll use it