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We recognize that many Local Education Agencies (LEAs) are beginning to plan for next school year while challenges and unknowns for SY 2022–23 continue. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is in the process of developing guidance to address questions regarding a number of operational areas, including:
- Carryover Eligibility
- Paid Lunch Equity
- Severe Need Reimbursement and Two Cents Differential Reimbursement
- Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Program Allocations
- Local Wellness Policy Triennial Assessment
- USDA Foods
- And Other Areas
Sponsors will be updated as soon as additional information from the USDA becomes available. Thank you for all your work to provide nutritious meals to the students of Washington state!
The Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program Application for School Year 2022-23 opens this Friday!
The FFVP provides a fresh fruit or vegetable snack to elementary school students and is an effective and creative way to introduce fresh produce as a healthy snack option.
Funds are awarded to the highest free and reduced-price (FRP) percentage elementary schools. We invite all schools that meet the eligibility requirements to apply for this program.
There are two requirements for eligibility:
- 50% or more of the students enrolled in the school must be eligible for free or reduced-price meals.
- The school must meet the definition of an elementary school; Pre-K/Kindergarten through grade 5 or a variation or, Pre-K/Kindergarten through grade 8.
OSPI Child Nutrition Services will be releasing an application bulletin in the coming weeks. The application deadline for participation for school year 2022–23 is April 30, 2022. Applications received after the deadline will not be considered.
Application Process
Your application will be submitted using the Washington Integrated Nutrition System (WINS). You can review the Applying for FFVP Using WINS recorded training to better understand this process.
Questions? Please email Rachel Floyd or call 360-742-4155.
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On March 7, 2021, President Biden passed Executive Order (EO) 14019. This Executive Order encourages agencies to consider ways to expand citizens' opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.
Through the Child Nutrition Programs, operators have the ability to reach Americans to provide them with information about voting.
The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) encourages all State agencies administering the Child Nutrition Programs to provide local program operators with promotional materials, including voter registration and non-partisan, non-campaign election information, to disseminate among voting-age program participants and their families.
Ideas include, but are not limited to, encouraging:
- School food authorities administering the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in high schools, and adult day care centers and emergency shelters participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) to promote voter registration and election information among voting-age participants and use congregate feeding areas, such as cafeterias, or food distribution sites, as sites for the dissemination of information;
- Operators of the CACFP and the Summer Food Service Program to post flyers with voter registration and election information to reach parents and/or guardians of young participants; and
- All program operators to post information on their website and social media channels, and link to relevant resources, including vote.gov.
For a sample flyer please visit USAGov’s Quick Guide to Voting in 2020 as an example of information that may be used by program operators.
For State and local election websites please visit Find My State or Local Election Office Website.
The Child Nutrition Programs play an essential role in the health and development of our nation’s children, and can also play a role in enabling all Americans to participate in our democracy.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently published Transitional Standards for Milk, Whole Grains and Sodium - Final Rule for the School Meal Programs and Child & Adult Care Food Program (CACFP).
This final rule establishes transitional standards to support the continued provision of nutritious school meals as schools respond to and recover from the pandemic and while USDA engages in notice-and-comment rulemaking to update the meal pattern standards to more comprehensively reflect the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025. The standards are effective July 1, 2022, and include:
- Low-fat (1%) flavored milk may be served in the School Meal Programs and to children ages 6 and older in CACFP.
- In the School Meal Programs, unflavored nonfat or low-fat milk must be offered as the second milk type if low-fat flavored milk is served.
- At least 80% of grains served in the School Meal Programs must be Whole-Grain Rich and the remaining servings of grains must be enriched.
- Reduces the dietary specifications for sodium for school lunch by 10% to Target 1a for SY 2023–24.
- Sodium Target 1 will be maintained for school lunch in SY 2022–23 and for school breakfast in SY 2022–23 and SY 2023–24.
Learn More
Questions? Please contact your School Meals Program Specialist.
CEP Expansion Signed into Law
Governor Inslee signed House Bill 1878 into law on March 4, 2022. The new law requires participation in the USDA Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) for all schools with an Identified Student Percentage (ISP) of 40%. This expands the work of HB 2660 (2020) which required CEP in non-high schools above 62.5% ISP. For more details about Identified Student Percentage, please review the CEP Reference Sheet.
State Funding will Supplement Federal Funds in Lower ISP Schools
The law also ensures that CEP schools will get the highest possible per-meal reimbursement. When a school’s Free Claiming Percentage (ISP * 1.6 federal multiplier) is less than 100%, state funding will supplement federal reimbursement so that all meals served are reimbursed at the free rate.
Join Us for a Webinar!
Join OSPI Child Nutrition Services for more information about CEP requirements, the application process, and impacts on other funding.
Register for the SY 2022–23 Community Eligibility Provision Webinar
Date: Wednesday, April 13
Time: 1–2 pm PT
This webinar will be recorded and posted to the School Meals Public Moodle after the recording is closed captioned. Keep an eye out for a future CNS Update!
Questions? Please email your OSPI CNS Program Specialist.
All public school districts and private schools must conduct outreach for summer meals each school year as required by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The outreach is to advertise the availability of summer meals before the end of the school year. Even if there won’t be a summer feeding program in your community, you must share resources that allow households to locate summer meals in the area.
Outreach includes distributing locations, meal times, and contact information through your regular communication channels.
There are a number of resources, in both English and Spanish, to raise awareness in your community.
- USDA Resources
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Summer Meals Locator- Promote this tool in English or Spanish.
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USDA National Hunger Hotline- can be reached Monday–Friday
- Families can call 1-866-3-HUNGRY (1-866-348-6479)
- For Spanish, families can call 1-877-8-HAMBRE (1-877-842-6273)
- No Kid Hungry Resources
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The OSPI Communication Toolkit located on the SFSP Resources webpage, under the 'Promote the SFSP' dropdown. There you'll find:
- Social Media Graphics and Sample Social Media Posts
- Marketing Materials such as flyers, door hangers, and a banner image
The 2021–22 Washington Public School Data for Area Eligibility Report is now available.
This report may be used to establish area eligibility for the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), the Seamless Summer Option (SSO), and the Afterschool Snack Program (ASP). Area eligibility may be assigned if school data indicates that the proposed meal site is located in an attendance area of a public school where at least 50% of the children are eligible for free or reduced-price school meals.
The Area Eligibility in Child Nutrition Programs Reference Sheet provides more details on area eligibility.
Questions? Please contact your program specialist.
West Valley School District Gets a New Forklift!
One of our recent Meal Access Grant grantees wrote in to share about their new purchase:
"Attached are some pictures of us putting our new forklift in action!! Compared to our old one, this is like a Cadillac! We can finally get into our small dry storage room and into our freezer. Being electric we can run it in our warehouse without the fumes that were suffocating for us and not safe for the food products. We can't thank the grant committee enough for helping make our lives so much easier. We look forward to moving towards central ordering now!" ~ Kara Carlson, Nutrition Services Supervisor for West Valley School District
Thank you for sharing your story! We are so happy to see the forklift in action!
About the Meal Access Grant
The Meal Access Grant, funded by the Washington State Legislature, provides grant funds for public school districts, tribal compact schools, and charter schools. This competitive grant allows Local Education Agencies to request funding for starting a new meal program; increasing participation in an existing program; improving program meal quality; and improving the equipment and facilities used in an existing program.
The grant application period begins in December each year. For more information about the Meal Access Grant and other CNS Grants offered, please review the CNS Grants webpage.
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