No Kid Hungry Center for Best Practices has created an integrated Free and Reduced-Price Meals Application Toolkit to aid schools and school districts in their communication efforts with families around meal applications and returns. Also known by other names such as Household Applications for Free and Reduced-Price School Meals, Alternative Income Forms, and Free and Reduced-Price Meal Forms, this toolkit can be tailored to your district’s individual needs. You can download and customize the resources; apply the guidance for connecting with families; and/or get inspired by the multiple examples included from other districts nationwide.
In addition to the national toolkit linked above, No Kid Hungry Louisiana has also created a state toolkit with language and personalized resources specific to Louisiana to help school districts communicate with families about the importance of completing meal applications. If you are utilizing the Community Eligibility Provision and instead using alternative income forms, see this resource: Alternative Income Forms: Understanding What They Are, Why They’re Important, & How They’re Collected.
For schools that will not be continuing free meals for all students this school year via the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) or Provision 2, you will need to resume collecting free and reduced-price (F/RP) meal applications from families to determine student eligibility for free and reduced-price meals. This toolkit includes materials to help school districts and community-based organizations conduct outreach to families including who is eligible and how to enroll.
In this toolkit, you’ll find a checklist of strategies to maximize completion of free & reduced-price meals applications. Outreach materials that can be customized with your district’s name, logo, and contact information.
To begin using and customizing resources within this document, please download the corresponding link.
This resource contains questions to consider before getting started with F/RP Meal application outreach
This resource highlights tips on building the application as well as best practices for direct outreach to families and general messaging.
This resource contains a formal template letter schools and school districts can use to share F/RP Meal information to parents.
This resource contains a helpful script for phone and text message engagement as well as responses to common questions.
This resource contains various robocall, email, and text message templates for use when conducting outreach to families.
This resource features a collection of Frequently Asked Questions and answers that can be customized to fit your district(s) needs.