- Cleveland Metropolitan School District
- Community Partners
Browns, ADA help students grab breakfast (Photo gallery)
CMSD NEWS BUREAU
12/18/2018
Students who are hustling to class in the morning at 13 schools will be able to eat breakfast on the run, compliments of the Cleveland Browns and the American Dairy Association.
The Browns and the ADA, partners in the Fuel Up to Play 60 program, awarded $20,000 in grants to the District to purchase 13 “grab-and-go carts” that will be stocked with 17 packaged items like cereal bars.
“You need to fuel yourself for the school day,” Chris Burkhardt, CMSD’s executive director of school nutrition, told students when the grants were announced Tuesday at Marion C. Seltzer PreK-8 School on West 98th Street. “You can’t learn if you’re hungry."
Besides academic performance, nutrition also plays a role in health and, as a result, school attendance.
The Browns are the signature partner in the District’s “Get 2 School. You Can Make It!” attendance campaign, which has substantially reduced the number of students who miss more than 10 days in a year. Browns kicker Greg Joseph and offensive lineman Earl Watford were present for the announcement and spoke to students about their own diets.
The players also answered students’ questions about other subjects, such as what would they be doing if they weren’t football players (Watford, who enjoys drawing, said he would be an artist) and whether they like to cook. (“I’m a big microwave guy,” Joseph said. “I like to cook, but I don’t like to clean, so I use a microwave.”) They also helped to judge a dance contest pitting teachers against students.
The District already had grab-and-go carts in 25 schools and will cover nearly 70 more with the grants announced Tuesday, another grant and some of its own funds.
Seltzer Principal Caitlin Kilbane believes the message the players helped to deliver about nutrition made a strong impression on her students, one that will have lasting effects.
“The experience goes well beyond this moment,” she said. “I think it will be more than that Browns players came here.”
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