School Nutrition Bulletin 2021-34

On March 18, 2021, USDA’s Team Nutrition initiative will present Crediting Store-Bought Combination Baby Foods in the CACFP. Registration for this free webinar is now available, using the following registration links:

This upcoming webinar will show CACFP operators how to identify store-bought combination baby foods that can be served as part of reimbursable meals or snacks to infants. Attendees will have the opportunity to submit questions to the presenters and to check their knowledge through interactive polling questions. FNS Regional Offices, State agencies, sponsoring organizations, and CACFP program operators are invited to participate.

 

Team Nutrition will provide certificates of participation to individuals who attend the entire thirty-minute webinar. The National CACFP Sponsors Association (NCA) is also offering webinar participants the opportunity to submit and track continuing education credits. Additional information on this opportunity is available from NCA in their Learning Center. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Commission on Dietetic Registration has also approved this webinar for 0.5 hours of Continuing Professional Education Units (CPEUs).

 

More information and additional registration links can be found at CACFP Halftime: Thirty on Thursdays Training Webinar Series.

 

Students, parents, and staff will go wild over this year’s SCORE BIG National School Breakfast Week 2021 (NSBW21), which runs March 8-12. This year’s sports theme is sure to get your school pumped and participation up. See the School Nutrition Association's Toolkit for information, ideas, and activities to promote NSBW21. The toolkit contains simple ways to engage students in every learning situation – whether your students are all in school, learning at home, or sticking with their pod. Be sure to tag #NSBW21 and #WISchoolMealsRock in your school’s social media posts!

 

If the person responsible for running Direct Certification has left their position with your Local Education Agency (LEA) or is no longer responsible for running Direct Certification due to a change in duties, please notify the School Nutrition Team at dpifns@dpi.wi.gov right away so that we can disable their access and authorize a new representative if needed.

 

Typically, the LEA official responsible for determining children’s eligibility for free and reduced-price meal benefits is the only one who should have access to Direct Certification. There may be a back-up person with access to Direct Certification, but there must be a legitimate “need to know” to provide a service or carry out an authorized activity. In order to prevent unauthorized access to this information it is very important that users do not share login or password information, and accounts that are no longer needed are disabled expediently. It is the LEA’s responsibility to account for staff who have access to Direct Certification and notify the School Nutrition Team of any staff changes.

 

With learning plans changing by the week and drastic fluctuations in meal participation, we know you’ve got a lot on your plate! For those of you running the Afterschool Snack Program while participating in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), here are some educational and enrichment activities you can share directly with students to go along with their Afterschool Snack. For those of you running afterschool snack as a third program outside of the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) or Seamless Summer Option (SSO) you also need educational and enrichment activities for students, since you only claim two meals within those programs.

 

This week we’re sharing farm to school videos for all ages. You can share the links with families, print out the list and slide it into a snack sack, or play the videos during snack time, as you wish. If you have any requests for materials you don’t see here, please reach out to Susan Bostian Young at Susan.BostianYoung@dpi.wi.gov.

 

 

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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. dpi.wi.gov/school-nutrition #WISchoolMealsRock