68 MASS. EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 263 



Mid-Session Service 



In but 22 of the 800 buildings of the 222 rural Massachusetts towns con- 

 sidered in this report has any mid-session food service been established; and 

 in each of these buildings it is a milk service, no attempt having been made 

 to provide any other type of food. For 13 of the 22 buildings, the mid-ses- 

 sion food is the only food served during the day; in 9 buildings there is in 

 addition some sort of noon food service. In every instance the mid-session 

 service is in the morning. 



In most of these 22 schools with mid-morning milk service, no effort is 

 made to encourage all the children to take the milk. The idea still persists 

 that only the underweight child will profit from the extra food; and the pro- 

 portion of children utilizing the service varies from 5 to 25 per cent. It is fre- 

 quently very difficult to obtain good milk for serving in the isolated rural 

 school, as the local dealers do not wish to bother with small bottles, or make 

 deliveries at a time when the mMk can be received at the schoolhouse. Some- 

 'times there is no dealer who makes deliveries, the people depending for milk 

 'upon their own or their neighbor's cow. No school was found where this 

 'difficulty had been solved by the use of evaporated or dried milk, although 

 this is a feasible solution. 



The complaint is heard many times that mid-morning food spoils the pu- 

 pils' appetites for lunch. In the towns visited, no school was seen which had 

 a milk service at mid-morning. The terms "mid-session" and "mid-morning" 

 are not synonymous. The most usual hour of breakfast of the children proved 

 on inquiry to be seven o'clock; the noon recess is almost invariably at twelve. 

 Mid-morning, therefore, as far as food is concerned, means half-past nine; 

 mid-session is half-past ten. The difference of this hour is significant for 

 appetite and digestion. In the few cases where such service exists, the usual 

 time for drinking the milk was found to be between half-past ten and quar- 

 ter of eleven. This should be expected to interfere with the noon meal. Ex- 

 perience elsewhere has shown that, on the contrary, a mid-morning milk 

 service, where the children drink the milk not later than half-past nine, in 

 no way interferes with the appetite for the noon meal. It may, rather, im- 

 prove appetite through the lessening of the morning's strain and fatigue. 



The amount of mid-session food service now existing in the schools of 

 rural Massachusetts is small on any basis of computation; and the number 

 of pupils served is negligible when estimated as a percentage of total pupils. 



Summary 



1. The 57,600 elementary school pupils of 222 Massachusetts towns of less 

 than 5,000 population are housed in 800 school buildings: 370 one-room; 208 

 with two or three rooms; and 222 with four or more rooms. 



2. Of the 16,000 children who must always remain at school over the noon 

 hour, 6,000 attend buildings where there is no food service whatsoever. 



3. Of the 800 buildings, 71 per cent have no food service; 23 per cent, 

 supplementary service of hot food in cold weather; 3 per cent, milk service; 

 and 3 per cent, meal service. 



