The New York City Department of Education’s Office of Food and Nutrition Services (OFNS) exists to equitably serve New York City’s students with healthy and delicious meals that enhance their educational experience, reflect their voices, and nourish them into adulthood. They acknowledge that tasty food without nutrition is detrimental to students’ well-being while healthy meals without taste repel students’ curious taste buds and limit participation.

OFNS has always championed initiatives both in-house and nationally that facilitate the development of the best tasting and most nutritious menu items for students everywhere. The office was a lead advocate for the Chefs Move to Schools program, which partnered chefs with school communities to spread awareness about how whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods can be delicious and fun to cook. OFNS has also promoted the Farm to School Program, which connects schools with local farms and food producers to stimulate fresh food exchange that varies by the season, local economic development, and healthy eating for students.

Plant Powered Fridays, launched by Mayor Eric Adams, is the latest New York Citywide initiative giving more than one million students a new outlook on meals centering fruits and vegetables. Every Friday since February 2022, New York City school cafeterias have featured a delicious plant-based dish, rich in vitamins, minerals, fiber, and protein, as the primary menu item. The beloved staff make many of these meals from scratch with freshly prepared ingredients.

Students are empowered to guide the future of New York City school food. Close to 1,900 students annually taste and approve dishes like the Big City Bean Taco before they are served in New York City’s 1,800 public schools. The initiative also encourages young learners to make healthy food choices for a lifetime by exposing them to nutritious meals prepared in different, flavorful ways and providing them with the recipes to make these meals at home.

Building on this groundbreaking initiative, Mayor Adams and Department of Education Chancellor David C. Banks launched the city’s first-ever Chefs Council in September 2022, in partnership with Wellness in the Schools. The council is developing over 100 scratch-cooked, plant-based, and culturally relevant recipes and providing hands-on training for OFNS chefs. OFNS added a brand-new Sweet Potato Gumbo dish, developed by the Rachael Ray-led council, to their Plant Powered Friday’s menu in February 2023.

Another way New York City encourages students to participate in the meals program is to offer culturally responsive menu options. New York City serves halal and kosher meals at schools across the city and adapts its menus to ensure students from all backgrounds can find items they know and love in the cafeteria. On any given day, you might find Caribbean Style Beef Patty, Chicken Dumplings, Turkey Quesadilla, or other items on our menus that reflect the cultural diversity of the city. All of these meals meet and exceed the highest nutrition standards from the USDA, with reduced levels of sodium, fat, and added sugar.

For decades, OFNS has realized they cannot innovate to serve students alone and has partnered with the USDA, health officials, policymakers, city agencies, academics, coalitions, sustainability organizations, health, education, and culinary nonprofits, staff, and students to ensure the tastiest and healthiest food is served on students’ plates. This has resulted in significant menu changes over the years, professional development opportunities for staff members, and advancements in food procurement and preparation that make culturally responsive and Plant Powered meals possible.

OFNS is thrilled to continue offering exciting options for students that is driven by their feedback.

Washington, DC, November 17, 2015 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced $4.8 million in grants for 74 projects spanning 39 states that support the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) efforts to connect child nutrition programs with local farmers and ranchers through its Farm to School Program.

"Farm to school programs work—for schools, for producers, and for communities," said Secretary Vilsack. "By serving nutritious and locally grown foods, engaging students in hands-on lessons, and involving parents and community members, these programs provide children with a holistic experience that sets them up for a lifetime of healthy eating. With early results from our Farm to School Census indicating schools across the nation invested nearly $600 million in local products, farm to school also provides a significant and reliable market for local farmers and ranchers."

USDA's Farm to School Grants fund school districts, state and local agencies, tribal nations, agricultural producers, and non-profit organizations in their efforts to increase local foods served through child nutrition programs, teach children about food and agriculture through garden and classroom education, and develop schools' and farmers' capacities to participate in farm to school. Awards ranging from $20,000 to $100,000 are distributed in four different grant categories: Planning, Implementation, Support Service, and Training.

For the 2016 school year, grants will serve more than 5,211 schools and 2.9 million students, nearly 40 percent of whom are eligible for free or reduced-price meals. Funded projects include:

• Conway School District in Arkansas received a planning grant to design a local food processing kitchen program in a centralized school kitchen facility that will allow the district's schools to serve nutritious local produce throughout the school year.
• The Ferguson-Florissant School District in Missouri received an implementation grant to partner with St. Louis University and local farms to expand and integrate its farm to school program through the HELP (Healthy Eating with Local Produce) project. Through HELP, student employees will use preservation techniques to make local produce available to all 24 schools in the district year round, even outside of regular harvest seasons. HELP will offer high school students culinary training, hands-on experience with local produce, and food production skills while providing employment in the local community.
• The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets received a support service grant to build on a successful pilot program that provides local procurement, food safety, culinary skills, and capacity-building trainings for districts. The department will also identify and work with interested local growers to facilitate market-readiness trainings.
• The Oxford School District in Mississippi, which previously received a FY 2013 planning grant, will expand their program through an implementation grant. The district will take part in a city-wide food hub collaboration with the Oxford City Market and turn garden projects into self-sustaining educational programs. Since receiving their initial grant in 2013, the project has served as an example to schools around the state and will continue to lead the way for farm to school projects in the coming years.
• The First Nations Development Institute in New Mexico received a training grant to convene Native American food producers and leaders from schools with primarily Native American student bodies for a two-day training. The event will facilitate connections between schools and producers, showcase best practices, present resources available to initiate and further develop farm to school programs, and provide an open forum to discuss the unique challenges and opportunities for farm to school programs in Native communities.

For a complete list of 2016 Farm to School Grant recipients, please see the 2016 Farm to School Grants summary page.

The latest round of USDA Farm to School Grants brings investment since the program's inception in fiscal year 2013 to $19.9 million. Projects have been funded in all 50 states, DC, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A report released earlier this year found that a vast majority of grantees use the USDA Farm to School Grant funds to strengthen or develop new partnerships, suggesting the potential for widespread collaboration between eligible schools, nongovernmental and community-based organizations, agricultural producer groups, and other community partners. This is reinforced by a recent USDA Farm to School Census finding that 39 percent of participating school districts saw greater community support as a result of their farm to school program.

Farm to school programs are one of the many tools and resources USDA offers to help schools successfully serve healthier meals. In the past three years since the bipartisan passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, kids have eaten healthier breakfasts, lunches and snacks at school. Over 97 percent of schools report that they are successfully meeting the updated nutrition standards.

In addition to school meals, USDA's Food and Nutrition Service administers several other nutrition programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (Commonly known as WIC), and the Summer Food Service Program. Together, these programs comprise America's nutrition safety net.

Washington DC, May 4, 2015 – Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services Under Secretary Kevin Concannon today announced the results of a nationwide assessment of improper payments in school meals programs, as well as several steps to sustain progress by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in reducing errors and improving school meal program integrity. Schools are responsible for ensuring that school meal programs operate according to federal requirements. Today’s announcement will provide $8.5 million in grants to improve schools’ operational and oversight efforts in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. In addition, a new rule is being proposed to help states better target resources to districts at highest risk of improper payments. Combined, these efforts will decrease administrative errors and waste while streamlining the certification process so children can get access to the nutrition they need to learn and thrive.

“Reducing errors in our school meal programs is a top priority for USDA,” said Concannon. “The data show that we are moving in the right direction, and the efforts announced today will help schools continue to reduce errors in the school meal programs. By focusing on program efficiencies, we protect taxpayer dollars and ensure the school meal programs remain available to the millions of children who rely on them.”

In order to ensure proper stewardship of these vital programs, USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service developed a study series titled Access, Participation, Eligibility and Certification (APEC) to collect nationally-representative data from schools and school food authorities every five years. This study estimates improper payment rates and amounts in three key areas: aggregation, certification, and meal claiming errors.

• Aggregation errors occur when a school undercounts or over counts the number of meals that are eligible for reimbursement.
• Certification errors occur when a child is placed into the wrong meal reimbursement category, such as when a child who is eligible for reduced priced meals is certified for free meals, or when a child who is eligible for free meals is denied.
• Meal claiming errors occur when a meal is categorized incorrectly as reimbursable or non-reimbursable at the point-of-sale in the cafeteria. These errors typically involve a required item, such as a milk or fruit being left off of a tray by the student.

Today, USDA is releasing the second iteration of that study, which shows that while the overall level of program error remains unacceptably high, there have been notable areas of improvement. The overall error rate has been reduced, with significant declines in the frequency of aggregation errors – from 3.8 percent to 0.8 percent in the National School Lunch Program and from 6.0 percent to 1.2 percent in the School Breakfast Program.

The $8.5 million in grants are a continuation of USDA’s efforts to ensure proper and efficient administration of its child nutrition programs. Four million dollars will be targeted toward states’ work to improve the integrity and efficiency of school meals administration through development and implementation of administrative review and training tools and strategies, including technology solutions. Another $4.5 million will go toward increasing the use of direct certification, the process of using income data already verified from SNAP applications to certify children in those households for free meals without requiring a second application. Findings from this new study demonstrate that direct certifications are substantially more accurate than certifications based on paper applications.

Other ongoing USDA initiatives aimed at future long-term reduction in program error include:

• Implementation of the Community Eligibility Provision, which allows high-poverty school and districts to provide free meals to all students without needing to collect applications, certify individual students, or manage student payment accounts;
• A redesigned administrative review process, adopted by most state agencies in school year 2013-2014;
• Implementation of new professional standards for school foodservice personnel effective for school year 2015-2016;
• Release of an updated prototype school meals application in 2015 developed jointly by USDA and the Office of Personnel Management’s Innovation Lab;
• New research on household application errors; and
• The establishment of a new Office of Program Integrity to lead the development of future data and evidence-driven reforms.

One of the many tools the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 provided USDA to help address improper payments in the school meal programs was an update to the administrative review process used by state agencies to monitor local school meal service. A proposed rule implementing this provision, also announced today, includes risk-based approaches to enable states to target error prone areas and schools needing the most compliance assistance. The proposed rule also includes a number of recommendations such as off-site monitoring approaches that will result in more agility, and greater ability to use state staff efficiently.

“The updated procedures are meant to give states more tailored ability to conduct reviews, allow for the efficient use of limited time and staff, and result in more robust and transparent monitoring of school nutrition programs,” said Concannon. “Through this combination of financial support for schools, rule-making, and promoting the use of direct certification and the community eligibility provision, USDA is committed to continuing our progress in reducing the rate of improper payments in our school nutrition programs.”

The comment period for the proposed rule is open for 60 days after date of publication in the Federal Register. Feedback from state agencies, school food authorities, and other interested parties is an important part of the rulemaking process. To view the proposed rule online and submit comments, visit http://www.fns.usda.gov/school-meals/federal-register-documents.

All state agencies interested in applying for the grants announced today can visit http://www.fns.usda.gov/grant-opportunities.

USDA's Food and Nutrition Service administers America’s nutrition assistance programs including the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs, the Child and Adult Care Food Program, the Summer Food Service Program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Together these programs make up the federal nutrition safety net.

WASHINGTON, DC, November 19, 2013 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced grants for 71 projects spanning 42 states and the District of Columbia that support the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) efforts to connect school cafeterias with local farmers and ranchers through its Farm to School program.

"In rural and urban communities across the country, Farm to School programs teach students where food comes from, while providing healthy foods that are grown locally on farms and ranches across the nation," said Vilsack. "These programs also create new market opportunities for local farmers and ranchers interested in partnering with nearby school districts – and by helping to create an even more diverse and thriving agriculture sector, Farm to School efforts hold potential to create new jobs in rural areas."

Selected projects will serve more than 13,000 schools and 2.8 million students, nearly 45 percent of whom live in rural communities. Projects are diverse:

• Somerville Public Schools in Massachusetts will work to develop a district-wide farm to school program with community partners that focus on creating youth jobs and promoting healthy eating and physical education.
• Olympia School District in Washington state will partner with two local farms to help students apply biology, American history, and horticulture skills towards farm management. The farms will grow organic produce for the school district and serve as an outdoor educational space for students.
• Bayfield Regional Food Producers Cooperative in Wisconsin will overcome the obstacles of a short growing season by helping local school districts install and manage high tunnels to supplement school gardens. In addition to providing nutrient-dense hardy greens and other vegetables to the students in their lunches and snacks, the high tunnels will allow educators to implement experiential, project‐based learning in the spring and fall seasons.
• Northeast Iowa Food & Fitness Initiative and Upper Explorerland Regional Planning Commission in Iowa will work with local farmers and a newly established food hub to boost production to meet the needs of local schools. They have set a goal with four rural school districts to increase local purchases by 200 percent.

These projects highlight the critical need for a new Food, Farm and Jobs Bill now more than ever, said Vilsack. Producers need renewed and expanded access to Farm Bill programs to fuel the growing demand for local food in new markets, including school meals programs, and to increase economic opportunities for America's farmers and ranchers.

USDA Farm to School grants help schools respond to the growing demand for locally sourced foods and increase market opportunities for producers and food businesses, including food processors, manufacturers, and distributors. Grants will also be used to support agriculture and nutrition education efforts such as school gardens, field trips to local farms, and cooking classes. For a complete list of FY14 Farm to School grant recipients, please see: http://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/FY_2014_Grant_Award_Summaries.pdf

USDA recently released the results of the first-ever Farm to School Census, which showed that in school year 2011-2012, school districts purchased and served over $350 million in local food, with more than half of participating schools planning to purchase more local foods in the future. School districts that missed the opportunity earlier in the year to respond can submit information regarding farm to school practices through November 30, 2013.

USDA's Farm to School Program is part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which authorized USDA to provide grants and technical assistance to help schools gain better access to local foods. It is also a core element of the USDA's Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Initiative, which coordinates the department's work on local food systems.

USDA is focused on improving childhood nutrition and empowering families to make healthier food choices by providing science-based information and advice, while expanding the availability of healthy food.

• America's students now have healthier and more nutritious school meals due to improved nutrition standards implemented as a result of the historic Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Initiative.
• USDA's MyPlate symbol and the resources at ChooseMyPlate.gov provide quick, easy reference tools for parents, teachers, healthcare professionals and communities.
• USDA awarded $5.2 million in grants to provide training and technical assistance for child nutrition foodservice professionals and support stronger school nutrition education programs.

Collectively these policies and actions are helping to combat child hunger and obesity, while improving the health and nutrition of the nation's children. For more information on the Farm to School program, please visit www.fns.usda.gov/farmtoschool.