That meal application: Returning it benefits your kid's school
Every fall, school officials and school food advocates urge SFUSD families to return the school meal application form, writing “not interested” if they know they don’t meet the income criteria for subsidized lunch.
This year, we are recession victims and are filling out the form for real. So now I know — this form is awful. Even though it’s pretty short, it’s ugly, intimidating and user-unfriendly. That’s not the fault of our school district — even though the form is customized for San Francisco Unified, its contents are mandated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the National School Lunch Program.
Many school food advocates are calling for the feds to eliminate the form and the massive bureaucracy that it creates and just feed every student free who shows up in the cafeteria. Among other benefits, that would mean the caf workers could actually pay attention to providing lunch for the kids, rather than devoting much of their energy to the “counting and claiming” process — keeping track of the record-keeping for qualified students to ensure that no “cheats” get a school lunch they don’t “deserve.” The nation’s current best-known school food celebrity, Chef Ann Cooper, has joined that call.
Here is an explanation of why families who think they qualify are urged to fill out the form (even if their kids aren’t likely to eat in the caf), and why all families are asked to return it, even with “not interested” on it. It benefits all our schools and our kids when those forms are returned!
Why do parents need to fill out a meal application?
Student Nutrition Services (SNS), the district department responsible for providing school meals, is asking all families to fill out the meal application, even those who know they won’t qualify based on family income. See below for more details.
SNS has annual expenses of about $16 million. Their main source of income is from federal and state reimbursements for breakfasts and lunches served to students who qualify for free and reduced price meals. Without a meal application on file, SNS cannot receive the full government reimbursement for those meals.
Based on family size and income, as reported on the meal application, students are designated eligible for free or reduced price meals, or they are designated as being on “paid” status (meaning not reimbursable). The “paid” category includes not only students whose family income is too high to qualify for reimbursement, but also students whose families have not filled out a form at all. SNS receives just 25 cents from the government to offset the cost of “paid” lunches, while total reimbursement for a student qualified for free meals is $2.78. Students on “paid” status are expected to pay for their school meals. However, not all of them do so.
How will my school benefit if parents fill out the meal app?
BENEFITS TO SCHOOLS
-- Schools receive money based on the figures that come from these forms.
-- Free and reduced lunch counts determine individual school eligibility for
Federal Title 1 funding.
-- There are other grants and award available to schools based on percentages of students enrolled in the NSLP.
-- Higher rates of students qualified for free or reduced price meals brings higher WSF funding.
-- Having a free/reduced lunch participation rate which accurately reflects the economic status of the school’s students ensures a more accurate “similar schools” ranking on the Academic Performance Index.
BENEFITS TO ENROLLED STUDENTS
-- Eligible students can receive breakfast as well as lunch.
-- Often school lunch is more nutritious than what students bring from home, because the school lunch must comply with USDA nutrition standards.
-- Studies show students who eat a nutritious breakfast and lunch learn better and behave better in school.
-- Enrolled students pay a greatly reduced rate for each AP exam they take, and are eligible to participate in other paid programs at reduced or no cost.
BENEFITS TO EVERY STUDENT IN THE SCHOOL
-- Higher participation in the lunch line means better quality food for everyone!
-- Student Nutrition Service is working to improve the meal quality at all schools, but changes require money. The budget for SNS comes from government reimbursement and from student’s payments for each meal served. No revenue is generated when students don’t sign up or use the lunch program, when students buy their food off campus or from vending machines, or when students do not pay for their lunches even when they should. If more students enroll and use school meal programs, more money will be available to order fresher, more appealing food for every student’s lunch, whether they are eating the NSLP lunch or buying a la carte food from the Beanery.
(This information is available as a flyer which can be printed out at:
www.sfusdfood.org)
What about families who know they won’t qualify because their income is too high?
SNS is asking all families to fill out the meal application, even those who know they won’t qualify based on family income. Those families can simply provide the student’s name and write “NOT INTERESTED” prominently on the top of the form. The reason why families are being asked to return the form even if they are not interested, is that SNS has determined that fear of being identified as “poor” created a stigma for students returning the form in prior years. Having every student return a form eliminates this stigma, and makes it more likely that students who would qualify for reimbursement will return their forms without embarrassment.
Why not just add a “not interested” box on the form to be checked off if the family knows they won’t qualify?
The contents of the meal applications are tightly regulated by the state and federal government. No changes can be made to the form with prior approval. SNS did ask for permission to add such a box to their form, but permission was denied by the state.
Why should a family fill out the form if their child doesn’t want to eat in the cafeteria?
If there is any chance that the student might qualify for reimbursable meals, the family should fill out the entire form, even if the child won’t eat in the caf, because every qualifying child raises the school’s free and reduced percentage. It is on this percentage that funding decisions are based. So being identified as qualified helps the school even if the child never sets foot in the caf. Of course, if the child does decide to eat school meals sometimes, then that helps too, by bringing in more reimbursement money for SNS, which is then available to fund better quality food.
For more information on the meal applications and all other aspects of SFUSD school food, go to www.sfusdfood.org, the volunteer-maintained website of the SFUSD Student Nutrition & Physical Activity Committee.
This year, we are recession victims and are filling out the form for real. So now I know — this form is awful. Even though it’s pretty short, it’s ugly, intimidating and user-unfriendly. That’s not the fault of our school district — even though the form is customized for San Francisco Unified, its contents are mandated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the National School Lunch Program.
Many school food advocates are calling for the feds to eliminate the form and the massive bureaucracy that it creates and just feed every student free who shows up in the cafeteria. Among other benefits, that would mean the caf workers could actually pay attention to providing lunch for the kids, rather than devoting much of their energy to the “counting and claiming” process — keeping track of the record-keeping for qualified students to ensure that no “cheats” get a school lunch they don’t “deserve.” The nation’s current best-known school food celebrity, Chef Ann Cooper, has joined that call.
Here is an explanation of why families who think they qualify are urged to fill out the form (even if their kids aren’t likely to eat in the caf), and why all families are asked to return it, even with “not interested” on it. It benefits all our schools and our kids when those forms are returned!
Why do parents need to fill out a meal application?
Student Nutrition Services (SNS), the district department responsible for providing school meals, is asking all families to fill out the meal application, even those who know they won’t qualify based on family income. See below for more details.
SNS has annual expenses of about $16 million. Their main source of income is from federal and state reimbursements for breakfasts and lunches served to students who qualify for free and reduced price meals. Without a meal application on file, SNS cannot receive the full government reimbursement for those meals.
Based on family size and income, as reported on the meal application, students are designated eligible for free or reduced price meals, or they are designated as being on “paid” status (meaning not reimbursable). The “paid” category includes not only students whose family income is too high to qualify for reimbursement, but also students whose families have not filled out a form at all. SNS receives just 25 cents from the government to offset the cost of “paid” lunches, while total reimbursement for a student qualified for free meals is $2.78. Students on “paid” status are expected to pay for their school meals. However, not all of them do so.
How will my school benefit if parents fill out the meal app?
BENEFITS TO SCHOOLS
-- Schools receive money based on the figures that come from these forms.
-- Free and reduced lunch counts determine individual school eligibility for
Federal Title 1 funding.
-- There are other grants and award available to schools based on percentages of students enrolled in the NSLP.
-- Higher rates of students qualified for free or reduced price meals brings higher WSF funding.
-- Having a free/reduced lunch participation rate which accurately reflects the economic status of the school’s students ensures a more accurate “similar schools” ranking on the Academic Performance Index.
BENEFITS TO ENROLLED STUDENTS
-- Eligible students can receive breakfast as well as lunch.
-- Often school lunch is more nutritious than what students bring from home, because the school lunch must comply with USDA nutrition standards.
-- Studies show students who eat a nutritious breakfast and lunch learn better and behave better in school.
-- Enrolled students pay a greatly reduced rate for each AP exam they take, and are eligible to participate in other paid programs at reduced or no cost.
BENEFITS TO EVERY STUDENT IN THE SCHOOL
-- Higher participation in the lunch line means better quality food for everyone!
-- Student Nutrition Service is working to improve the meal quality at all schools, but changes require money. The budget for SNS comes from government reimbursement and from student’s payments for each meal served. No revenue is generated when students don’t sign up or use the lunch program, when students buy their food off campus or from vending machines, or when students do not pay for their lunches even when they should. If more students enroll and use school meal programs, more money will be available to order fresher, more appealing food for every student’s lunch, whether they are eating the NSLP lunch or buying a la carte food from the Beanery.
(This information is available as a flyer which can be printed out at:
www.sfusdfood.org)
What about families who know they won’t qualify because their income is too high?
SNS is asking all families to fill out the meal application, even those who know they won’t qualify based on family income. Those families can simply provide the student’s name and write “NOT INTERESTED” prominently on the top of the form. The reason why families are being asked to return the form even if they are not interested, is that SNS has determined that fear of being identified as “poor” created a stigma for students returning the form in prior years. Having every student return a form eliminates this stigma, and makes it more likely that students who would qualify for reimbursement will return their forms without embarrassment.
Why not just add a “not interested” box on the form to be checked off if the family knows they won’t qualify?
The contents of the meal applications are tightly regulated by the state and federal government. No changes can be made to the form with prior approval. SNS did ask for permission to add such a box to their form, but permission was denied by the state.
Why should a family fill out the form if their child doesn’t want to eat in the cafeteria?
If there is any chance that the student might qualify for reimbursable meals, the family should fill out the entire form, even if the child won’t eat in the caf, because every qualifying child raises the school’s free and reduced percentage. It is on this percentage that funding decisions are based. So being identified as qualified helps the school even if the child never sets foot in the caf. Of course, if the child does decide to eat school meals sometimes, then that helps too, by bringing in more reimbursement money for SNS, which is then available to fund better quality food.
For more information on the meal applications and all other aspects of SFUSD school food, go to www.sfusdfood.org, the volunteer-maintained website of the SFUSD Student Nutrition & Physical Activity Committee.
6 Comments:
I am glad you posted this. I live and teach in a very poor district, Fresno Unified, and all of our kids get free breakfast and lunch due to that poverty, the lunch application IS used for so much more as you point out. Many schools miss out on funding if they do not have those forms.
For years our school would hunt down kids to get them filled out, but now, the school population is so poor (household income of $10K) that no one has to fill them out.
I know I don't qualify, so I just signed my name, why do they need my ss# and income info. There's to much identity theft for me to give this out to random clerks who read this. this is intrusive and unnecessary.....
Anonymous, they don't need your SS# and income info if you don't qualify -- just write "not interested" and your child's name and school, and sign it. If you are in SFUSD, you've already been given those directions.
“Helping Schools Succeed” is a new outreach initiative of Angel Food Ministries designed to address some of the most severe problems facing our young people today. It was a vision birthed in the heart of Pastor Joe Wingo and I consider myself blessed to be a part of the team exercising faith to see this vision become reality.
Let me give you just one example of the challenges we face. We have discovered that there are over 58,000 homeless K-12 youth in the state of Georgia. These are students who face a significant level of hunger every day. Imagine leaving school at 3:00PM with no reasonable hope of a nutritious meal until the next morning at a school breakfast. Even more sobering, think of a child dismissed from school on Friday afternoon with no expectations of a decent meal until returning to school on the following Monday. This happens often and it happens in every state of our great nation. Also keep in mind that less than 25% of homeless students graduate from high school.
The homeless student population is not the only group in crisis. Every state has a significant number of student families living at or below the poverty level. Consider the average wage for renters in the state of Connecticut. Even though Connecticut has the best rating for addressing the problem of child homelessness according to The National Center On Family Homelessness, the average wage earner for renters would have to work 51 hours per week for 52 weeks to simply afford the rent on a two-bedroom apartment. This does not take into account other basic needs such as food, clothing, transportation, utilities and medical care.
This is just a glimpse of the massive problems affecting families today. We believe AFM can make a difference. Several weeks ago the AFM school initiative was launched at Spalding High School in Griffin, Georgia. This is a public high school of 1300 students. The students involved in this project will be engaged in extraordinary community service outreach. They will learn various business principles that will complement the academic curriculum in their school. Most importantly, they will accumulate a benevolence fund to serve the most urgent needs of others. They will also offer quality food at more than half the retail price. And they will be supported and encouraged by the AFM family every step of the way.
We are very close to starting the next two school projects. They are metro Atlanta public high schools. There will be four high schools involved. School leaders have caught the vision of what a tremendous difference this project can make in the lives of their students.
I am attaching a document entitled, “Helping Schools Succeed.” It briefly describes the school program and some of the issues we deal with in Georgia. I would be happy to help you research your state. I would be glad to help you with data/information follow-up to school principals and superintendents. We’re finding that schools are enthusiastic to this concept.
Thanks a lot for posting it. It is really informative.
a very helpful article especially for the parents and students :) good topic for my writing paper for my freelance writing job project.
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