School Nutrition Program Update for June 5, 2018

department of education

School Nutrition Program Update for June 5, 2018


2018-19 Application for Educational Benefits Packet

The Application for Educational Benefits packet for school year SY 2018-19 is available on the SNP / Free and Reduced-Price Process / Student Meal Applications page of the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) website. School food authorities (SFA) must provide application packets to all households prior to the start of SY19. The earliest date that application packets can be distributed is July 1, 2018.

SFAs that provide all school meals at no charge will need to distribute the alternate application for the school to receive compensatory revenue. Refer to the School Finance / MARSS Student Accounting page of the MDE website.

The application packet for school meals includes:

  • Household Letter.
  • How to Complete the Application For Educational Benefits, which includes the updated household income guidelines. This page can be printed on the back side of the household letter.
  • Application for Educational Benefits form (two pages). Both pages must be distributed. Both Word and PDF versions of the application packet are available on the webpage.

The format of the Application for Educational Benefits has been revised based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prototype application packet.

  • The civil rights section has been moved to the second page.
  • SFAs that already have student racial/ethnic information on file may remove the civil rights section from the second page of the form.
  • More space has been created in the income section.
  • Households with earnings need to write in the total number of household members (Step 3C).
  • The approval/denial section has moved to the back page of the application. A box has been added to the bottom of the second page to indicate that an application has been selected for verification and that the Verification Tracker is attached. 
  • Page 2 of the application lists more examples of types of income to report.


Other Documents to Include

The application packet can be used to include other documents that SFAs are required to distribute at the beginning of the school year.

Outreach for the School Breakfast Program

Minnesota Health Care Programs Flyer – Public SFAs are required to notify families about the availability of Minnesota Health Care Programs each year. The updated flyer from DHS, with 2018-19 income guidelines for health programs, is available from the link to the Student Meal Applications page shown above. 

Translations Application packets in Hmong, Somali and Spanish are available from the link to the Student Meal Applications page shown above. The three translated application packets are in the Translated Documents section at the bottom of the webpage.

For other languages, translations of the USDA prototype application packet may be used. The USDA application packet is available in about 50 languages on the USDA website. 

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