Children’s Week in the Legislature, so named because of the number of bills being heard this week on child care, early devlopment and parental instruction, etc., features several ambitious and worthy ideas. Here is a modest one that might otherwise get overlooked: breakfast.

“The most important meal of the day” must seem even more important to kids who can’t get any. The School Breakfast Program, in 493 of 723 schools in Maine, provided low-cost or free meals to 18,000 children last year. The children, whose families were below 185 percent of the poverty level, received approximately one-fourth of their day’s nutrition through the federally funded program.

Sen. Mary Cathcart of Orono has submitted a bill that would offer incentive money for the 80 or so schools that have at least 30 percent of their students eligible for the the breakfast program but do not offer it. The $3,000 one-time grants could be used to pay for needed cooking equipment or serving carts for the breakfasts. After that, the $1 per meal reimbursement from the federal government usually covers the entire cost of the program. Some schools even find that the money helps offset some of the costs of their lunch programs, according to the Maine Coalition for Food Security.

The link between a healthy breakfast and a child’s ability to concentrate on schoolwork is well-established. Opponents might argue that some of the families in poverty spend money on nonessentials that could have been used to pay for breakfast, and that may be true. But the argument doesn’t feed an 8-year-old whose empty stomach is of far greater concern to her than multiplication tables or the explorations of Magellan.

Teachers often notice the difference in school performance between a well-fed student and a hungry one, and researchers have documented it for more than a decade. Most recently, scientists at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital looked at breakfast programs in Baltimore and Philadelphia and found that impoverished students who began participating in the program improved math grades, reduced tardiness and absences and created fewer disruptions in class — so both they and their classmates benefitted from the program.

Sen. Cathcart’s bill is relatively low in cost, specifically targeted to a deserving group and funds a program shown to work. Her proposal deserves the Legislature’s full support.