State schools superintendent Randy Dorn joined the Children’s Alliance this week to ask school officials to think about how kids start their day: with their minds on their studies, or on their empty stomachs?

Members of our staff joined Superintendent Dorn and the outstanding educators and students of Auburn’s Washington Elementary School Monday morning to demonstrate a simple route to academic success: school breakfast.

The Children’s Alliance, Dorn and other anti-hunger allies have launched the statewide Fuel Up First with Breakfast Challenge. The Challenge aims to increase participation in school breakfast programs by 50 percent over the next two years.

Washington’s 1.7 million kids had no part in negotiating the deal passed by Congress Tuesday to raise the debt ceiling. But their futures will be affected by it, profoundly and perhaps disastrously.

In a very short time, Congress now stands to make decisions with far-reaching effects on programs used by the one million Washington households accessing food stamps; or the nearly 700,000 kids on Medicaid; or the 11,000 children enrolled in Head Start.

In this minute-long audio slideshow aimed at our state’s lawmakers, Seattle high schooler Daniel Perlmutter makes a common-sense plea for taxing candy and soda to pay for kids' health care. It’s simple, he says.

“Candy … it’s fun, but it’s not food. Yet our tax laws treat candy like bananas, bread and milk. That’s preposterous!”

The House has made the right move by proposing a tax on candy and gum. Our state loses out on more than $40 million in revenue every year because these sweets are exempt from state sales tax.