This final rule with comment period expands fluid milk options by allowing schools and child and adult care providers participating in child nutrition programs to offer whole and reduced-fat milk to participants two years and older.
Effective July 1, 2025 (school year 2025-26), school nutrition standards include a limit on the amount of added sugars allowed in breakfast cereals, flavored milk, and yogurt served in the NSLP and SBP, and for flavored milk sold as competitive foods known as Smart Snacks in School.
The purpose of this memorandum is to provide guidance to state agencies and school food authorities on the paid lunch equity requirements for school year 2026-2027.
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 memorandum provides notice to child nutrition program operators regarding the Continuing Appropriations, Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act, 2026.
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 memorandum seeks to ensure that current Food and Nutrition Service guidance pertaining to federal civil rights and nondiscrimination obligations remains aligned with applicable laws, regulations, executive orders and directives relevant to the agency’s 16 nutrition assistance programs.
As part of Secretary Rollins’ commitment to support American beef and create healthy outcomes for American children, the Farm to School Program is committed to working with CNP operators to help them source and serve local in program meals.
In this program guidance, Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke L. Rollins, strongly encourages child nutrition program operators to familiarize themselves with the key recommendations and consider how the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030 can be incorporated into program meals and snacks to promote healthy outcomes and healthy families.