The Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 permits direct verification of school meal applications and requires FNA to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of direct verification (instead of household verification) by school district.
The Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 required that the Food and Nutrition Administration (FNA) evaluate the impact of Simplified Summer which now operates in 26 states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
This study examines the feasibility of expanding the use of computer matching for certification and verification of children eligible for free and reduced-price meals funded under the National School Lunch Program. This study provides a detailed description of how computer matching is currently used and how it could be used.
This is the first of a series of annual reports which will assess the administrative error associated with school food authorities’ approval of applications for free and reduced-price school meals. More than 95 percent of students who were approved for benefits on the basis of an application were receiving correct benefits, based on the information in the application files. In school year 2004-05, 3.5 percent of all students who submitted an application for free/reduced-price meal benefits had an administrative error in the processing of their applications,
The Analysis of the Summer Food Service Program and Food Needs of Non-participating Children was designed to determine why children who attended elementary school during the 2003-2004 school year and were eligible for free or reduced-price meals did not participate in SFSP. For the purposes of this report, children who are eligible for free or reduced-priced meals will be referred to as "SFSP-eligible children."
To manage the Child Nutrition programs effectively, FNA collects and analyzes information from annual State-level management reports. However, because these State-level reports vary considerably in both format and content, FNA is unable to rely on this source for all of its ongoing information needs.
The study collected data on-site on food, labor, and other meal production costs for a five day period. A major goal was to test the feasibility of identifying meal production costs that were not charged to the SFA account (to obtain full costs) and directly allocating costs to different SFA activities.