FNS Documents & Resources

The fiscal year 2018 Direct Certification Improvement Grant Request for Applications are available to state agencies that administer the National School Lunch and the School Breakfast programs to fund the costs of improving your direct certification rates with SNAP, and other needs-based assistance programs.

This question and answer memorandum is designed to provide an overview of policies related to unpaid meal charges and to address common questions FNS has received from state agencies, school food authorities, and local program operators.

The purpose of this memorandum is to strongly encourage local educational agencies to accept eligibility determinations from a transferring student’s former LEA to minimize disruptions in meal benefits for low-income students and avoid student debt resulting from unpaid meal charges.

There has been confusion about how unpaid meal charges must be handled when all collection efforts have been exhausted. To help address these situations, this memorandum clarifies the processes of designating delinquent debt that has been determined to be uncollectable as bad debt and obtaining assistance to offset bad debt losses.

The purpose of this memorandum is to address the need for school food authorities participating in the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program to institute and clearly communicate a meal charge policy, which would include, if applicable, the availability of alternate meals.

This is a new collection to review and document state and school food authority National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs Management Information Systems in order to provide FNS with a baseline assessment of the MIS system and to inform FNS regarding how states and SFAs use data systems beyond fulfilling FNS reporting requirements.

This is a request for information from Management Information Systems software and hardware vendors and developers to learn about the functionality of state and school food authority National School Lunch and School Breakfast program data management information systems. 

This is a request for information from Management Information Systems software and hardware vendors and developers  to learn about the functionality of state and school food authority NSLP and SBP data management information systems.

FNS invites state agencies that administer the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program to apply to participate in demonstration projects that will evaluate the effectiveness of conducting direct certification with the Medicaid program.

The attached Q&As are issued in follow-up to Policy Memorandum SP 50-2013, Release of the new state agency Direct Certification Rate Data Element Report.