This data collection fulfills states' reporting requirements and describes trends in program participation during the COVID-19 pandemic from July 2021 through September 2022. It is part of an ongoing study series examining child nutrition program operations, repurposed to collect waiver usage and trends in program participation and operations during the pandemic.
This data shows the percentage of TEFAP administrative funds passed through from state agencies to emergency feeding organizations in fiscal year 2022.
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted school meal operations and has contributed to lasting supply chain issues affecting the cost and availability of food and labor. The School Food Authority Survey II on Supply Chain Disruption and Student Participation was administered to all SFAs operating child nutrition programs in schools to gather information on the impacts of continued supply chain disruptions and the return to standard operations during SY 2022–23.
This study is the first nationally representative, comprehensive assessment of the school meal programs since the updated nutrition standards for school meals were phased in beginning school year 2012-2013. A study methodology report that describes the study design, sampling and data collection and a summary report that provides a brief overview of the study and key findings from the various reports are also available.
This report responds to the requirement of PL 110-246 to assess the effectiveness of state and local efforts to directly certify children for free school meals. Direct certification is a process conducted by the states and by local educational agencies to certify eligible children for free meals without the need for household applications.
This White Paper examines whether any additional means-tested programs might be feasible for use in the direct certification of school-age children participating in school meals or for verification of household income on meal applications.
The second Access, Participation, Eligibility and Certification Study (APEC II) included a follow-on report that provided statistically-derived state-level estimates of school meals erroneous payments. However, while APEC II provided a rough indicator of relative risk for groups of states (e.g., higher than average, about average, lower than average), it was not a state-representative direct measure, and creating actual annual measures of such erroneous payments at the state level using APEC methodology is cost-prohibitive. This report explores alternative approaches to developing measurement-based state-specific estimates that are responsive to year-to-year changes in the actual underlying rate in each state. It also provides cost and burden estimates for the implementation of each of these methods.
This study updates a 2009 analysis of the nutrient and food group content of the USDA Foods offered and delivered through federal nutrition assistance programs. The study also estimated the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) scores under the HEI-2010 and the HEI-2005 scoring systems for each program’s benefits.
This series of research briefs examines best practices in school food authorities' implementation of key provisions and their impacts in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, including fruits and vegetables, plate waste, sodium, participation, revenue, whole grains, smart snacks, and a special view of obesity.
FNS developed the Access, Participation, Eligibility and Certification (APEC) study series, which collects and analyzes data from a nationally representative sample of schools and school food authorities (SFAs) about every 5 years. APEC allows FNS to develop a national estimate of erroneous payment rates and amounts in three key areas: certification error, meal claiming error and aggregation error. FNS recently completed APEC II, which collected data in School Year 2012-2013 and this report summarizes those findings.