The purpose of this audit guidance policy memorandum is to clarify the options available to state distributing agencies or recipient agencies in assigning value to USDA donated foods for audit purposes.
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.
Statistical models were designed to estimate national improper payments due to certification error on an annual basis using district-level data. This enables FNS to update its estimates of national improper payment rates for the NSLP and SBP in future years without having to conduct full rounds of primary data collection.
This memorandum provides general guidance on the various procurement groups FNS has identified, how to use each group in a way that complies with federal procurement standards, and supersedes SP 35-2012, Procuring Services of Purchasing Cooperatives, Group Purchasing Organizations, Group Buying Organizations, etc., dated June 12, 2012.
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 is the 11th in a series of annual reports that examines the administrative accuracy of eligibility determinations and benefit issuance for free or reduced-price meals in the National School Lunch Program.
Under previous interpretation of 2 CFR 200.325, FNS communicated that “subcontracts exceeding the Simplified Acquisition Threshold” not only applied to subcontracts related to construction or facility improvement contracts, but also applied to food service management companies as the contracts they have with school food authorities were considered to be subcontracts and, therefore, fell under the scope of the bonding requirements in 2 CFR 200.325
This rule proposes to codify several provisions of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 affecting the integrity of the child nutrition programs, including the National School Lunch Program, the Special Milk Program for Children, the School Breakfast Program, the Summer Food Service Program, the Child and Adult Care Food Program and state administrative expense funds.