More than 300 students at Isabella School participated in National School Breakfast Week March 7-11.

The weeklong celebration focused on the school’s breakfast program to increase breakfast participation.

“We had a great response throughout the week,” Isabella School Assistant Manager Christie Payne said. “Typically, we have 515 students eat lunch every day and we had 311 eat breakfast throughout the week, so we were close to our normal lunch crowd for breakfast which is really great.”

Payne said students of all ages were encouraged to eat breakfast at school and students who don’t normally eat breakfast found themselves visiting the cafeteria.

“We have a lot of high school students who don’t eat breakfast at school,” Payne said. “A lot of times they will just skip breakfast or get a drink or something, but we had a good turnout from all ages last week. There was also a prize drawing where each person who ate breakfast received a ticket and they put their ticket in a pot for the drawing. At the end of the week, we had the drawing, and a third-grade student, Jacob Barrett, won a $25 iTunes gift card.”

Payne said in 2015, the cafeteria decided to offer a breakfast option for students called a “Grab’n’Go” consisting of a biscuit, drink and fruit for $1 or covered under the school’s meal plan.

“We offer the Grab’n’Go options in addition to what we offer each day for breakfast,” Payne said. “For instance, the school menu could call for breakfast burritos one day, but we also offer the Grab’n’Go option for a better variety. We have found that those are really popular, and a lot of students will get one of those.”

Payne said the school offers different types of biscuits each day including sausage, egg and cheese biscuits, sausage biscuits, chicken biscuits, link sausage biscuits and steak biscuits.

“We have the biscuit options every single day of the week,” Payne said. “Since we started offering additional choices for breakfast, our breakfast numbers have increased. A lot of kids really like being able to come by and get a biscuit before heading to class. We have found a lot of people enjoy it.”

Breakfast is served at the school every morning beginning at 7:10 a.m. and typically wraps up at 7:45 a.m.

“We were very pleased with the turnout we had this year,” Payne said. “Breakfast is a good way for kids to start out their day.”