Information Collection for the National School Lunch Program

Summary

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this notice invites the general public and other public agencies to comment on this proposed information collection. This collection is a revision of a currently approved collection that FNS employs to determine public participation in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and to obtain, account for, and record information from state and program operators that is necessary to effectively manage the NSLP and ensure compliance with statutory and regulatory program requirements.

Request for Comments

• Comments may be sent to: Jennifer Otey, School Meals Program Monitoring Branch, Program Monitoring and Operational Support Division, Child Nutrition Programs, Food and Nutrition Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314.
• Comments may also be submitted via email to jennifer.otey@usda.gov.
• Comments will also be accepted through the Federal eRulemaking Portal. Go to http://www.regulations.gov and follow the online instructions for submitting comments electronically.

All responses to this notice will be summarized and included in the request for Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approval. All comments will also become a matter of public record.

Abstract

The Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (NSLA), as amended, authorizes the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to safeguard the health and well-being of the nation's children and provide free or reduced-price school lunches to qualified students through subsidies to schools. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides states with general and special cash assistance and donations of foods to assist schools in serving nutritious lunches to children each school day. Participating schools must serve lunches that are nutritionally adequate and maintain menu and food production records to demonstrate compliance with the meal requirements.

Section 10 of the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 (42 USC 1779) requires the Secretary of Agriculture to prescribe such regulations as deemed necessary to carry out this Act and the NSLA (42 USC 1751 et seq.). Pursuant to that provision, the Secretary issued 7 CFR part 210, which sets forth policies and procedures for the administration and operation of the NSLP. The program is administered at the state and school food authority (SFA)/local education agency (LEA) levels, and operations include the submission of applications and agreements, submission of the number of meals served and claims to be paid, submission of data from required monitoring reviews conducted by the state agency, and maintenance of records. State and local operators of the NSLP are required to meet federal reporting and accountability requirements and are also required to maintain records that include school food service accounts of revenues and expenditures.

This information collection is required to administer and operate this program in accordance with the NSLA. All of the reporting and recordkeeping requirements associated with the NSLP are currently approved by the Office of Management and Budget and are in force. Since the last renewal, FNS has adjusted the decimal conversions for the time estimates for some of the information requirements to keep the conversions consistent across its collections. This has resulted in a slight increase of 247 hours to the estimated burden for this collection, from 9,808,454 to 9,808,701 hours. FNS estimates that the estimated number of respondents and responses will remain unchanged from the previous renewal. There are no further changes to this collection due to the pandemic. The pandemic resulted in FNS not being able to collect updated data from state agencies and in FNS not being able to move forward with other rulemaking. Rulemaking in 2023 will impact this collection in the next renewal.