How Many School Districts In State Of Massachusetts Are Registered For Free And Reduced Lunch Nslp?

School Meals During the Pandemic

When COVID-xix airtight schools in March 2020, school nutrition professionals chop-chop adapted operations to ensure hungry students continued to have access to healthy school meals. Thanks to federal regulatory waivers, schools offered free meals to all children through the Summer Food Service Programme (SFSP) and Seamless Summer Option (SSO). Schools distributed take hold of-and-go meals at drive through option-up sites and delivered directly to student homes or along bus routes. Parents could pick upwards multiple days worth of grab and go meals at a fourth dimension for remote learners without the child present.

As students returned to school, waiver extensions allowed schoolhouse nutrition professionals to continue to safely serve students whether they were learning in person or remotely. Schools implemented new food safety and sanitation procedures and enforced social distancing during meal service to minimize contact between students and staff. Offering gratis meals to all students sped up meal distribution and improved rubber by eliminating requirements for staff to collect payment or verify student eligibility for complimentary meals.

SY 2021/22 waivers allowed school meal programs to maintain catch-and-get meals, pandemic safety measures and free breakfast and tiffin for all in person and remote learners through SSO. Even so, SNA's Back to School 2021 Survey finds school repast programs nonetheless face significant concerns, including continued pandemic supply chain disruptions and staff shortages, fiscal and regulatory challenges.

Supply Chain & Financial Challenges

School repast programs from every geographic region and district size are reporting a broad variety of supply concatenation disruptions. SNA'south 2021 Supply Chain Survey found over 98% of programs report shortages of menu items, supplies and packaging, as well as card items existence discontinued by their manufacturers. Schools go along to serve students healthy meals, merely these disruptions leave school nutrition professionals scrambling to place additional orders for substitute menu items, find new vendors when orders are shorted, cancelled or delayed, and even make trips to local stores to purchase necessary nutrient and supplies. Schools must brand last-minute changes to the menu based on availability and reduce the number of choices in the cafeteria. The additional work is taking a cost on school nutrition staff, and nearly all respondents (95%) indicated staff shortages are a challenge.

Astringent supply concatenation and staffing challenges add to financial difficulties for schoolhouse repast programs. Well-nigh all respondents (97%) reported higher costs, compared to contracted bids, with nearly iii quarters citing it as a "meaning claiming." Schoolhouse meal programs have e'er operated on extremely tight budgets, and pandemic school closures and financial losses left many programs on shaky basis. USDA data shows that in the starting time total year of the pandemic (Mar. 2020 – Feb. 2021), schools served two.2 billion fewer meals compared to the prior year, equating to a $2.3 billion loss in federal acquirement. SNA surveys point 54% of school meal programs reported a fiscal loss in SY 2019/20, and 38% incurred a net loss for SY 2020/21 (an boosted 12% were unsure of losses).

Recognizing higher pandemic costs, USDA continues to reimburse schools for free meals at the college SFSP charge per unit. Withal, merely well-nigh one-half of programs indicated these reimbursement rates for school breakfast and lunch are sufficient to cover the costs of producing a meal, including food, labor, supplies and pandemic costs.

Given the extent of these disruptions and ongoing financial challenges for school meal programs,SNA is urging USDA to extend pandemic schoolhouse nutrition waivers through SY 2022/23.

Benefits of School Meals

Counterbalanced diet throughout the day contributes to pupil success in and out of the classroom. New research shows children are getting their healthiest meals at school. Studies take demonstrated that school repast programs play an of import role in supporting obesity prevention, overall student health and academic achievement by improving children'south diets and combatting hunger. Click on the links to read more nigh the proven benefits of the School Breakfast Programme and National School Tiffin Program. Also, hear from Pediatrician Robert Murray (Medico, FAAP) nearly the importance of nutrients to brain and child development, and how salubrious school meals build healthier students.

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Participation, Meals Served and Programme Cost

National School Lunch Program (NSLP) Boilerplate Daily Participation:
Pre-pandemic, nearly 100,000 schools/institutions serve schoolhouse lunches to 29.vi million students each day, including:

20.1 million free lunches
i.7 million reduced toll (student pays $0.40)
7.vii 1000000 full price
iv.9 billion lunches are served annually

(Source: USDA FY 2019 information)

NSLP Annual Cost:
14.20 billion in federal dollars, including:

12.87 billion in reimbursements
1.33 billion in commodity costs

(Source: USDA FY 2019 data)

School Breakfast Program (SBP) Boilerplate Daily Participation:
Pre-pandemic, over 90,000 schools/institutions serve school breakfasts to 14.77 million students each 24-hour interval, including:

11.80 million costless breakfasts
0.74 1000000 reduced price (pupil pays $0.xxx)
2.23 1000000 full price
2.45 billion breakfasts are served annually

(Source: USDA FY 2019 data)

SBP Annual Toll:

4.half-dozen billion in federal reimbursements
No commodity entitlement

(Source: USDA FY 2019 data )

Reimbursement Rates

Federal Reimbursement Rates for SY 2021/22:
School meal programs are reimbursed by the U.South. Department of Agriculture for each repast they serve. Alaska, Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands receive college rates. Below are the reimbursement rates for meals served in the contiguous states to students eligible for free meals, reduced price meals, and for students who pay for their meals. Get further details on reimbursement rates.

Note: Due to pandemic waivers, during SY 2021/22 well-nigh schools will receive reimbursement rates prescribed for the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). Click hither for SFSP reimbursement rates.

NSLP Reimbursement Rates for SY 2021/22:

Free: $3.66
Reduced Cost: $3.26
Paid: $0.35
Schools certified as meeting the new nutrition standards receive an boosted $.07 per lunch.
An additional $.02 per luncheon is provided to schools in which sixty pct or more of the second preceding school year lunches were served gratuitous or reduced toll.

SBP Reimbursement Rates for SY 2021/22:

Free: $ane.97
Reduced Cost: $1.67
Paid: $0.33
An additional $0.38 is provided for each free or reduced price breakfast served in "astringent need" schools, where at to the lowest degree xl percent of the lunches served during the second preceding school yr were served free or reduced toll.

Eligibility for Gratuitous and Reduced Price Meals

Children from families with incomes at or below 130% of the poverty level are eligible for free school meals. Those with incomes betwixt 130% and 185% of the poverty level are eligible for reduced cost meals (pupil pays 30 cents for breakfast and twoscore cents for lunch). In SY 2021-22, a family of four earning $34,450 or less is eligible for gratis meals and 1 earning $49,025 or less is eligible for reduced price meals.

Children from families with incomes over 185% of poverty pay full price for their meals. Local schoolhouse districts set their own prices for paid meals. Get farther details on income eligibility, including rates for Alaska and Hawaii.

Notation:Cheers to federal pandemic waivers, school repast programs are permitted to offer free meals to all students without an application through the end of SY 2021-22.

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School Repast Prices and Unpaid Meals

School repast prices vary widely across the country. Prices are set past local school districts, ordinarily with school lath oversight. The following table lists average prices for paid meals during the 2016-17 school year. The data was nerveless in SNA'southward State of School Nutrition 2018survey, which included responses from 1,550 SNA member schoolhouse districts nationwide.

	Dejeuner	Breakfast
Elementary	$two.48	$1.46
Center	$2.68	$i.53
High	$two.74	$1.55

Unpaid meals and charge policies:

No one wants a child to go hungry or feel shame – especiallythose working in school cafeterias. School nutrition professionals work throughout the year to enroll struggling families in the gratis and reduced price meal program and to make the cafeteria a welcoming, prophylactic space for students.

School meals are as critical to learning as textbooks and teachers. To ensure every student is nourished and prepare to larn, SNA advocates for providing all students schoolhouse meals at no charge. Unfortunately, federal school meal funds only embrace the full cost of meals served to students eligible for complimentary meals. Schools must accuse all other students to embrace food, labor and other costs.

In 2017, USDA regulations mandated that schools implement unpaid meal policies clarifying what happens when a student cannot pay for a meal. Schools have latitude on what types of policies they develop. Policies may limit the number of times students can charge a meal or offer students a free, lower-cost alternate repast, such as a cheese sandwich, fruit and milk. USDA requires schools to effort to collect whatsoever debt incurred from meal charges and prohibits them from using federal funds to pay off unpaid meal debt. When families can't or don't pay for meals served, unpaid meal debt can rapidly accrue, forcing schools to employ education funds to cover losses.

SNA's 2019 School Nutrition Trends Report revealed 75% of districts had unpaid meal debt and the amount of debt has grown substantially in recent years. Debt is increasing despite widespread efforts to support families and prevent or minimize student meal charges. SNA's 2018 Schoolhouse Nutrition Operations Written report found schools employ tactics such equally: providing assistance to families completing gratuitous and reduced price repast applications; offering fiscal back up through charitable donations; providing online payment and monitoring of account balances; and sending low remainder notifications through automatic phone calls, texts and emails. Other strategies to curb unpaid repast charges include:

Eliminating the reduced price copay:

Some depression income families, particularly those with multiple school aged children, struggle to afford the daily reduced price copay for school breakfast (30 cents) and lunch (forty cents). Some schoolhouse districts and states have elected to cover the cost of the reduced price copay to ensure these students receive healthy school meals at no charge. This tactic can reduce unpaid meal charges and increment school meal participation among students from depression income families.

Community Eligibility Provision (CEP):

The Customs Eligibility Provision (CEP) is a federal program that allows the nation's highest poverty schools or districts to serve breakfast and tiffin at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications.

Research shows school meals contribute to the health, attentiveness, behavior and academic success of students. Allowing all students to receive gratuitous meals ensures students have equal admission to the benefits nutritious school meals while reducing program authoritative costs.

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Toll to Produce School Meals

In light of rising food costs and the increased cost of producing schoolhouse meals to see updated nutrition standards, school nutrition professionals face a delicate balancing act to keep their programs in the black. SNA is calling on Congress to provide increased funding and regulatory flexibility to help school meal programs manage higher costs.

In April 2019, USDA released the School Diet and Meal Cost Study, which examined the price of producing schoolhouse meals during schoolhouse twelvemonth 2014-15.The report found that the average school meal program operates at a small-scale arrears, and the reported cost of producing school meals typically exceeds federal reimbursements for those meals.

Costs differ from one community to the side by side due to regional variations in food, labor and fuel costs, and local variations in schoolhouse equipment and infrastructure, contract agreements, etc. Yet, for the typical school meal program, the average reported cost to produce a school lunch was $three.81, compared to the average federal complimentary dejeuner subsidy of $iii.32. The boilerplate price to produce a breakfast was $2.72, well above the federal subsidy of $one.88.

To boost operational revenue, many school meal programs rely on a la carte sales, provide catering services or contract with community programs such every bit Caput Start and child intendance or elder care centers to supply meals.

Breakup in costs:

The School Nutrition and Repast Cost Study revealed the post-obit boilerplate breakdown in costs for producing a school lunch:

Nutrient	44.7%
Labor/Benefits	44.5%
Other straight costs (supplies, contracted services, equipment, utilities, etc.)	ix.5%
Indirect Costs*	1.3%
Total	100%

*Indirect costs are paid to the school district for the utilise of facilities, administrative support or other services.

Typical expenses:

The average school nutrition program has a number of expenses beyond food, labor, benefits and supplies that gene into the budget. These include:

Purchased and leased equipment (kitchen, office, dining, vehicles)
Repair / maintenance
Purchased services (contracts with vendors for information processing, consultant fees, custodial, printing, advertizement, legal, human resources, etc.)
Engineering science (point of sale systems, nutrient analysis and menu planning software, inventory tracking and online payment systems)
Electricity / water / trash removal
Transportation / fuel
Professional development
Marketing / promotion
Security services and luncheon room supervision

Dejeuner Period Scheduling

Federal regulations state that "schools must offer lunches betwixt 10:00 am and 2:00 pm. Schools may asking an exemption from these times from the land bureau." These regulations as well encourage schools "to provide sufficient lunch periods that are long enough to requite all students adequate time to be served and to eat their lunches."

SNA'southward State of School Diet 2018 survey, which included responses from 1,550 SNA fellow member schoolhouse districts nationwide, revealed that the typical lunch period length is near half an 60 minutes, with a median of 25 minutes reported for unproblematic schools and thirty minutes for middle and high schools. Yet, this data does not specify the amount of time students have to consume their meals, every bit lunch periods must likewise include travel fourth dimension from the classroom to the cafeteria and time in line to select a meal.

Lunch schedules and short lunch periods keep to challenge school nutrition professionals, every bit they work to serve hundreds of students in a thing of minutes and ensure students have adequate time to enjoy their meals. Under updated nutrition standards for school meals, cafeterias are offer more than fresh produce, which takes more time for students to consume.

The Centers for Disease Command and Prevention's 2019 research cursory, Making Time for School Lunch, recommends that students have "at least xx minutes once they are seated (seat fourth dimension)." SNA has called on the Us Departments of Agronomics and Pedagogy to work with schoolhouse meal programs in developing best practices and guidance to ensure students have acceptable fourth dimension to eat healthy schoolhouse meals.

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