FNS Documents & Resources

This memorandum provides information on the revised Prototype Application for Free and Reduced Price School Meals. USDA updated the prototype application to improve the user experience for applicants by adjusting the reading level, streamlining the application instructions, and by adding clarity to the mailing instructions to reduce the number of applications sent to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights.

This collection is an extension, without change, of a currently approved collection for assisting state agencies and school nutrition professionals in recording, tracking, and managing the required training hours for state and local school district nutrition professionals to meet the requirements of the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act (HHFKA) of 2010 Professional Standards Rule.

The purpose of this new collection is to collect qualitative and quantitative stakeholder feedback through meetings, focus groups, interviews, other stakeholder interactions and surveys, as well as requests for administrative data, as part of the planning process for FNS regulatory actions, the semi-annual regulatory agenda, research studies, outreach, training and the development of guidance.

FNS plans to collect periodic data to obtain information on operational challenges facing institutions who operate or administer child nutrition programs, including state agencies, SFAs and Summer Food Service Program sponsors. The Operational Challenges in Child Nutrition Programs (OCCNP) Surveys, are designed to collect timely data on emerging school food service operational challenges, including but not limited to supply chain disruptions, food costs, and labor shortages, and/or related issues in SY 2023–2024, 2024–2025, and SY 2025–2026.

This collection is a revision of a currently approved collection for determining eligibility for free and reduced price meals and free milk as stated in FNS regulations.

This collection of information is necessary for the application of the Healthy Meals Incentives Recognition Awards by school food authorities.

This memorandum is the second set of questions and answers on the rural non-congregate summer meals option established through the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, and codified through the interim final rulemaking, Implementing Provisions from the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023: Establishing the Summer EBT Program and Rural Non-congregate Option in the Summer Meal Programs.

This rulemaking proposes to expand access to the Community Eligibility Provision by lowering the minimum identified student percentage participation threshold from 40 percent to 25 percent, which would give states and schools greater flexibility to choose to invest non-federal funds to offer no-cost meals to all enrolled students.

The purpose of this memorandum is to provide guidance for state agencies and program operators on aspects of the final rule that aligned the SFSP with other child nutrition programs: performance standards, budgets, and management plans.

The purpose of this memorandum is to revise guidance on rural designations in the Summer Food Service Program and the National School Lunch Program’s Seamless Summer Option (SSO). The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 authorized a permanent non-congregate meal service option through the SFSP and SSO for children who live in rural communities with no congregate meal service. This memorandum supersedes SFSP policy memorandum SFSP 17-2015, Rural Designations in the Summer Food Service Program – Revised, April 21, 2017.