Juan Lazalde Miranda was there, encouraging his 6-year-old son, John, to eat up. With a meager income - Lazalde Miranda is the family's main breadwinner and earns $16,000 a year cleaning in a restaurant - the father says the school breakfast is a blessing for the whole family.

"Like us, other families in here don't have a lot of resources," he says. "That's the majority of people you see here."

Nationally, Utah has one of the lowest rates of participation in the federally funded school breakfast program, according to a report released Thursday by the Washington, D.C.-based Food Research and Action Center (FRAC).

Of the 129,023 Utah students who receive subsidized school lunch, only 35,838 also are served breakfast.

With 28 percent of kids getting both meals, Utah ranks 49th out of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., for participation. Only Wisconsin and New Jersey do worse.

The top five states, led by Oregon and West Virginia, have 54 percent or more of eligible students participating in both meal programs.

FRAC reports 73 percent of Utah's schools offer breakfast. The national average is 79 percent.

Although there is concern about increasing the number of schools offering breakfast, access isn't the only issue, one advocate says. Gina Cornia, the director of Utahns Against Hunger, a statewide advocacy organization, argues part of the problem is getting word to families that the program is available.

"Getting the schools that actually have the program to increase their participation is as important as expanding the program to additional schools," she said.

Eligibility for the program varies according to family size. A family of four with an annual income of less than $24,000 is eligible for breakfast and lunch.

Davis School District increased participation dramatically by launching its "Breakfast in the Classroom" program more than a year ago. Every student at Sunset Elementary is served breakfast during the first 10 minutes of class. The school was targeted because more than half of the students there were eligible under federal standards.

"Everyone eats together," said Pam Tsakalos, nutrition service director for the district. "They're eating with their friends. They're eating with their teacher."

With success in Sunset, six more schools began offering the program earlier this year. Each day, 2,315 students in the seven schools eat breakfast.

In the Granite School District, 51 out of 89 schools offer the breakfast program, which means 15 percent of eligible children do not have access, said Bob Ward, the district's food service director. Barriers to expanding include bus schedules and paying staff to serve the meals, he said.

Access isn't a problem in the Salt Lake School District, where breakfast has been offered in every school since 1998. That includes schools such as Indian Hills Elementary, where as few as five kids eat breakfast each day.

"Reality is, it does not pay for the program," said Kelly Orton, the district's director of support services. But "there are five children that are better off."