This rulemaking proposes long-term school nutrition standards based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025, and feedback the USDA received from child nutrition program stakeholders during a robust stakeholder engagement campaign.
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.
USDA intends to use all available program flexibilities and contingencies to serve our program participants across our 15 nutrition programs. We have already begun to issue waivers to ease program operations and protect the health of participants.
These Federal Register notices inform the public of the annual adjustments to the reimbursement rates for meals served in the SFSP.
This is a new collection for the Healthy Meals Incentives Recognition Awards Application. The Recognition Awards will recognize school food authorities (SFAs) that have made significant improvements to the nutritional quality of their school meals by exceeding the transitional school meal pattern requirements, engaging students, and implementing innovative practices. SFAs can apply to one or more Recognition Awards included in the application form.
This request for approval of information collection is necessary to obtain input into the development of nutrition education interventions for population groups served by FNS. Collection of this information will increase FNS' ability to formulate nutrition education interventions that resonate with the intended target population, particularly low-income families.
This is an ongoing, voluntary information collection which is used by FNS to update the USDA National Hunger Clearinghouse. FNS collects information about the summer meal sites from state agencies using FNS-905. This form collects the site name, location, and operating details about the summer meal sites, such as dates and times of site operation.