FNS Documents & Resources

National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program sodium limits and timeline

Meal pattern chart for the School Breakfast Program

Webinar on transitional rule for state agencies & school food authorities.

School meals are one of the most important tools for ensuring children have access to healthy and nutritious food. USDA strengthened school meal standards in 2012. Research on the impact of these changes emphasizes why we must support nutritious school meals.

This new rule establishes standards for milk, whole grains, and sodium for school years 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 to give schools time to transition in the short term. 

The tip sheet provides a list of suggested practices that program operators may adopt to assist with proper meal counting and claiming when meals are served in alternative locations.

The primary role for state agencies will be the distribution of funds to their  school food authorities (SFAs). State agencies will receive their allocation of SCA funds from FNS, and they will in turn disburse those funds to eligible SFAs based on FNS guidance

This guidance describes $1 billion being provided by FNS to enhance local school districts’ ability to purchase foods for school meals by offering resources needed to address supply chain challenges directly to schools and school districts.

FNS has used its authority under FFRCA to waive certain onsite monitoring requirements for the school meals programs, the Child and Adult Care Food Program, and the Summer Food Service Program, so that programs can to maintain program integrity and support social distancing while providing meals. 

This fact sheet summarizes the methods used in the School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study (SNMCS) to collect, process, and analyze data to estimate the cost of producing reimbursable school meals. The methods were based on approaches used in prior USDA studies.