Professional Standards for school nutrition professionals is a key provision of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The final rule, published March 2, 2015, requires a minimum amount of annual training hours for all state directors of school nutrition programs, state director of distributing agencies, school nutrition program directors, managers, and staff.
School programs policy memo SP 14-2019 provides SY 2017-18 reporting guidance for the FNS-640 report. The FNS-640 form became available in FPRS on March 1, 2019. State agencies may use the attached instructions and business rules/edit check to begin and/or finalize implementation of processes for reporting and any system updates for School Year 2017-2018 reporting.
This final rule adds four flexibilities to the hiring standards for new school nutrition program directors in small local educational agencies and new state directors of school nutrition programs under the Professional Standards regulations for the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program.
In school year 2013-14, FNS introduced the unified administrative review and a 3-year review cycle. Since then, FNS has received feedback about the difficulties of the shorter review cycle, both for the state agencies conducting the reviews, and for school food authorities preparing for and responding to reviews.
FNS issued memorandum SP 07-2019 on Nov. 30, 2018. This memorandum provided information regarding the delay of the fiscal action process due to state agency reported errors associated with the SY 2018-2019 Fiscal Action Workbook.
The professional standards learning objectives are a resource for school nutrition professionals and trainers.