Most US children attend school for 6 hours a day and consume as much as half of their daily calories at school. A healthy school nutrition environment provides students with nutritious and appealing foods and beverages, consistent and accurate messages about good nutrition, and ways to learn about and practice healthy eating throughout the time children spend on school grounds—including before and after school.
Meal Service Strategies:
These resources are designed to help schools and child nutrition program operators navigate the unprecedented challenges of the 2020-2021 school year and ensure that children continue to receive the nutrition they need, including
School Meals Marketing Toolkit
This toolkit was created to help you get the word out to families about meals available for kids.
School Breakfast Toolkit
This toolkit provides resources on how to reach more students with your breakfast program, including resources on implementing alternative meal models like Breakfast in the Classroom, Grab and Go, and Second Chance Breakfast.
Summary Of Current COVID-19 Child Nutrition Program Response Nationwide Waivers: The table conveniently details all of this nationwide waivers and guidance issued to date by the USDA in response to the coronavirus.
About 7.7 million US children head to after school programs when the school day ends (1). Out of School Time (OST) is a supervised program that young people regularly attend when school is not in session. This can include before- and after- school programs on a school campus or facilities such as academic programs, specialty programs and multipurpose programs.
Serving Meals on Weekends: Students need healthy meals every day of the year to learn and grow. Learn how both school and non-profit sponsors can use the Afterschool Meals Program to serve meals and snacks to children on weekends, holidays, school breaks and closures during the 2021-2022 school year.
Summer Meals Outreach Toolkit: This toolkit features a range of ready-made promtional materials to help publicize summer meals in your communities
No Kid Hungry Summer Meals Calculator: This budgeting tool can help you plan for your summer meals program, including specific guidance on budgeting for mobile meals.
Tips for Staffing Summer Meals Programs: No Kid Hungry gathered advice from summer nutrition heroes who have found innovative ways to ensure that their programs stay afloat in the summertime with passionate and dedicated staff.
Virtual Enrichment Activities: This provides links to online activities that can be shared with kids in order to meet the afterschool enrichment activity requirement while providing non-congregate meals. These activites are also great alongside non-congregate summer meals!
Print Enrichment Activitiy Materials: This provides links to worksheets and handouts that can be printed and distributed along with non-congregate meals in order to meet the afterschool enrichment activity requirement.
References
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits qualifying households to purchase nutritious food using an electronic card that functions like an ATM card accepted at most grocery stores and farmers’ markets. SNAP can help families weather financial hardship and ensure access to healthy food.
As trusted messengers, schools and community organizations are an important source of information for families. This toolkit includes sample SNAP outreach materials in English and Spanish that can be customized with the local details and specifics that best serve your community.
SNAP Outreach Toolkit for Schools
Tennessee Justice Center SNAP Resources
The Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) program helps families afford food during this crisis. It provides an Electronic Benefits Transfer card that can be used at grocery stores – and in some states, to purchase groceries online – that contains the value of the breakfasts and lunches missed due to school closures. If you believe your family qualifies for this benefit and have not received it, please visit the DHS website to submit an inquiry.
See below for more information and a summary of resources:
Cooking Matters: An organization under Share Our Strength that offers free cooking classes for parents, kids and child care providers. Each lesson is taught by experts in many different community-based settings. Participants learn about cooking, meal prep, grocery shopping, food budgeting, and nutrition.
Breakfast Nudges: One method schools can incorporate into their plan to increase school breakfast participation is “Nudges.” Nudges are subtle acts of positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions that try to influence a student’s behavior.
A Guide to Building Relationships With School Nutrition Staff
Breakfast After the Bell Strategies for Middle and High Schools: Middle and high schools typically have lower breakfast participation than elementary schools. Middle and high school students have unique needs; therefore, the breakfast program should be adapted accordingly in order to gain buy-in from students and increase breakfast participation. This resource provides strategies on how to modify your school breakfast program to engage middle and high school students and get more students eating breakfast.
School Meals Supporting Social Emotional School Climates: Expanding participation in your school meals program can nourish students while simultaneously building social-emotional learning skills.
School Breakfast – Healthier Than You Think: School breakfast provides students a healthy start to the school day! School breakfast is healthier than most people realize, and can benefit kids, classrooms and communities. Learn about the nutritional qualities of school breakfast, and how it can improve student performance and create calmer classrooms
PTA Lunch and Learn – Everything Parents Need to Know About School Meals: Powepoint presentation slides presented to PTA members in November of 2021
Summary Of Current COVID-19 Child Nutrition Program Response Nationwide Waivers: The table conveniently details all of this nationwide waivers and guidance issued to date by the USDA in response to the coronavirus.