More Schools in State Move to Offer Students Breakfast : Hunger: In three weeks, 33 campuses joined program for needy pupils. But possible budget cuts threaten effort. : ORANGE COUNTY: Pockets of Poverty Amid the Affluence

By ALICIA DI RADO

Dec. 12, 1994 12 AM PT

They sang carols slightly off-key. And for a day, during their holiday pageant, the children became cardboard Christmas trees and gingerbread men.

But behind the happy appearance of pupils at Riverdale Elementary School in Garden Grove lie sobering statistics: About three-quarters of the enrollment, approximately 450 students, come from families poor enough to qualify for government-subsidized meals.

None of the students eats breakfast at the school, however. It is one of 22 elementary and secondary schools in the Garden Grove Unified School District that do not offer morning meals, even though they qualify as “needy” schools under government criteria.

Riverdale Principal Fred Clair said the school plans to apply for the breakfast program soon, but does not think it is needed. “We’re trying to be an educational institution and we’re evolving into a social institution,” he said. If first grade Riverdale teacher Patti Burnette sees a hungry student, she calls the child’s parents to tell them to feed the child. “I feel like people need to accept responsibility for their children and it’s not the school’s place to do it,” she said.

Overall, 31 “needy” Orange County schools qualify for--but do not offer--a breakfast program largely underwritten by the federal government. Among them are two elementary schools in the Orange Unified School District. Judy Ross, Orange Unified food services director, has encouraged schools to offer before-class meals, as students who qualify for subsidized meals in the district have jumped to 37% from 15% in 1987.

In Garden Grove--the county’s second-largest school district--officials say they are committed to school breakfast, but lag behind other districts in implementing the program because changes in families’ economic status are recent.

First-grade Garden Grove teacher Jolene Lichty rewards her students with snacks--bear-shaped cookies that she pays for herself. “It really gets them to respond,” Lichty said. “Some of them are hungry.”