Reporting COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Data for Forms FNS-10, FNS-44 and FNS-418

The federally-declared public health emergency due to COVID-19 created an unprecedented challenge to providing healthful meals to children who normally participate in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), School Breakfast Program (SBP), and the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). Through a series of waivers, NSLP/SBP, and CACFP local program operators were able to continue their mission to provide healthful meals to eligible children using combinations of the flexibilities provided for under NSLP/SBP, CACFP, the NSLP Seamless Summer Option (SSO), and the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) (Programs).

In addition to providing numerous flexibilities for program operations, the waivers also established data reporting requirements. In particular, each waiver requires that state agencies and local program operators provide:

• a summary of the use of each waiver by the state agency and local program operators, and
• a description of whether and how each waiver resulted in improved services to program participants.

In an effort to begin collecting some of the basic data elements that will included in the required reporting, the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) is asking states to report a small number of additional data elements with their routine data reporting on the FNS-10, FNS-44, or FNS-418 Forms. The additional data elements will be added to the Food Program Reporting System (FPRS) remarks fields for the monthly data collections beginning with the report for March 2020 and ending with either the June 2020 report or upon the expiration of the federally declared public health emergency due to COVID-19, whichever is earlier.

State agency staff should report the additional data elements in the FPRS remarks fields on both the 30-day and 90-day reports for each of the programs. The 30-day reports may contain actual and estimated amounts for additional data elements. The 90-day reports must contain only actual amounts for additional data elements.

The Food and Nutrition Service is responding rapidly to the COVID19 pandemic with multiple waivers and flexibilities in its programs. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act requires the Food and Nutrition Service to collect specific data elements from states. The CARES Act provides funding, for which FNS will collect information in order to distribute funding. Please prepare the necessary data elements to collect and submit this data as described in this document. The public will be given the opportunity to comment on this data collection, including legislatively-mandated data collection through a future information collection process being submitted to the Office of Management and Budget.

Because the remarks fields are unstructured, it is important to make sure that labels for each data element are used consistently across all states. In order to ensure that consistency, please use the template language below (noted with quotation marks) with each entry in the remarks fields. The specific data points are listed here, by form.

Data Requests by Form:

FNS – 10 REMARKS FIELD:

• Number of sites, by type, that provided meals and/or snacks
  • “NSLP/SBP sites ______________”
  • “SSO sites ______________”

FNS – 44 REMARKS FIELD:

• Number of center-based sites that
  • “Center-based sites that offered childcare _______________”
  • “Center-based sites that offered meals only _______________”
• Number of home-based sites that
  • “Home-based sites that offered childcare _______________”
  • “Home-based sites that offered meals only _______________”

FNS 418 REMARKS FIELD:

• “Number of sites under Covid-19 waivers _______________”

Please also note that states should continue to report meal data as usual on the respective data forms.

FNS appreciates the exceptional effort of state agencies and local program operators working to meet the nutritional needs of participants during a challenging time. State agencies should direct questions to the appropriate FNS regional office.

Sincerely,