We have studied school meal program operations for a long time. You can access published reports that go back to school year 1988-89. Each study in this series focuses on topics that are important to program operations at the time. Sometimes the studies also collect information about other child nutrition programs, like the Child and Adult Care Food Program and Summer Food Service Program.
We regularly collect information about the school meal programs and how they operate from the people who know best – the state agencies that oversee the programs in each state and territory and the school food authorities that manage the programs locally in one or more schools.
This is a revision to a currently approved collection to prevent a lapse in OMB approval of data collection. This collection allows for Food Distribution Programs, such as the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), to run effectively.
This is a reinstatement, with change, of a previously approved collection for which approval has expired.
The studies encompassed under this information collection will collect data from school food authorities administering the child nutrition programs, including information on emerging and ongoing challenges, their impacts on operations and student participation, and strategies SFAs are undertaking to address challenges they face.