FNS Documents & Resources

A Flash of Food Safety is an educational video series designed to help busy school nutrition professionals understand and practically apply safe food practices. The videos, available in English and Spanish, address five food safety topics: Handwashing: Why to Wash Your Hands, Handwashing: How to Wash Your Hands, Calibrating a Thermometer: Ice Water Method, Calibrating a Thermometer: Boiling Water Method, and Active Cooling with a Chill Stick.

This policy memorandum includes important updates to requirements related to accommodating children with disabilities participating in the school meal programs.

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.

In this webinar, we’ll share local food safety best practices, including identifying safety measures for school gardens and school salad bars.