School Nutrition Bulletin 2021-01

USDA has extended non-congregate feeding in the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, and Child and Adult Care Food Program for COVID-19 related operations throughout school year (SY) 2020-21. This waiver does not apply to the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). Meals served pursuant to this waiver and under a planned response to COVID-19 must be claimed under the appropriate program and may not be claimed under the SFSP or the National School Lunch Seamless Summer Option (SSO).

 

NOTE: During SY 2020-21, only meals served during unanticipated school closures may be claimed under the SFSP or SSO. Planned full or partial building closures are not considered unanticipated school closures for SY 2020-21.

 

Child Nutrition Program meals must follow meal service time requirements. However, due to COVID-19, meal service time requirements have been waived for SY 2020-21. This will help support safer access to healthy, nutritious meals. This waiver only applies to the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, and Child and Adult Care Food Program.

 

This waiver allows program operators to distribute National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, and Child and Adult Care Food Program meals to parents or guardians to take home to their children in the non-congregate setting due to COVID-19. This waiver is in effect for SY 2020-21.

 

State agencies must have a plan for ensuring that program operators are able to maintain accountability and program integrity. This includes putting procedures in place to ensure that meals are distributed only to parents or guardians of eligible children, and that duplicate meals are not distributed to any child.

 

More detailed information about the procedure will be forthcoming.

 

This waiver allows meals to be served that do not meet meal pattern requirements in the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, and Child and Adult Care Food Program. It does not pertain to the Summer Food Service Program after July 31, 2020.

 

NOTE: In order to participate under this waiver, program operators must contact the DPI School and Community Nutrition Teams for approval to utilize this waiver for SY 2020-21. Requests will be reviewed and approved on a case-by-case basis. We will consider requests that are targeted and justified based on plans to support access to nutrition meals. Program operators are strongly encouraged to meet the nutrition standards to the greatest extent possible.

 

This waiver eliminates the requirement to participate in Offer versus Serve at the high school level for SY 2020-21 and it only applies to the National School Lunch Program. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that schools serve individually plated meals in classrooms instead of in a communal cafeteria. Schools and districts attempting to adhere to this guidance would likely have difficulty meeting the Offer versus Serve requirement.

 

In addition this waiver enables schools to offer complete meals for delivery or pick-up for high school students doing distance learning during the COVID-19 health emergency.

 

The SY 2020-21 USDA Child Nutrition Program reimbursement rates have not yet been released.

 

On June 18 and 19, 2020, the DPI School Nutrition Team held three hour-long stakeholder calls providing information and answering questions related to what school foodservice would look like and what the needs of school nutrition professionals are in order to be successful in serving meals for the SY 2020-21. We would like to thank everyone who attended the calls and provided feedback, questions, and concerns.

 

Recordings of these calls, along with the PowerPoint presentation, are posted on our Child Nutrition Program COVID-19 Information webpage under the Back to School Planning drop-down. We are finalizing our responses to the questions we received and hope to post them by the end of this week.

 

We are in the process of determining dates for additional calls and will send information about those calls out soon. In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns regarding how your school foodservice will be operating next school year, do not hesitate to contact us. The best way to reach out is by email at dpifns@dpi.wi.gov or by calling (608) 267-9228.

 

If your SFA uses a web based application, the web based vendor must be approved by DPI prior to distribution of the application to households. The approved vendor listing is updated annually and is posted on the Free and Reduced Price Meal Applications and Eligibility webpage.

Please contact Tanya Kirtz or Tracy Huffman with questions about online application approval.

 

Reaching out to families in your community to let them know where, when, and how meals are being served is important.

 

In addition to using automated phone systems and posting on your district website, we encourage you to inform 2-1-1 Wisconsin of your open meal sites and let families know that they can call 2-1-1 to find free summer meals near them. 2-1-1 is a free, easy-to-remember phone number connecting callers with health and human services in their communities.

 

Due to the way meals are being distributed this year, the summer meals maps used in the past do not provide very accurate information, so we have also posted a complete list of schools and other summer meal sponsors that are serving meals this summer on our Find A Summer Meals Site webpage. Families may contact these agencies directly to find out when and where meals are being served.

 

Are you considering using online registration for School Year 2020-21 and looking for an easier way to distribute the free and reduced price meal application?

If so, we encourage you to ask us about SNACS (School Nutrition Accountability Software). This free software is available to SFAs through the DPI and it contains an online free and reduced meal application. For more information contact DPISNACSSupport@dpi.wi.gov.

 

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) recently sent out an update regarding Pandemic EBT or P-EBT. We encourage each school food authority to share this communication with enrolled families that have students who qualified for free or reduced price meals last school year. DHS has extended the deadline for online applications.

 

The American Academy of Pediatrics released their guidance for school re-entry on June 25, 2020.

 

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This institution is an equal opportunity provider.

 

This is a communication from the WI Department of Public Instruction, School Nutrition Team.

You can contact the School Nutrition Team at dpifns@dpi.wi.gov. To subscribe to schoolmealsnews, please send an email to dpifns@dpi.wi.gov.

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