A Message:

HUNGER DOESN'T TAKE A SUMMER VACATION
 

The Challenge
When schools close their doors for vacation next summer, over 12 million poor children, who qualify to receive a free or reduced price lunch during the academic year, will be deprived of this vital meal. The implications for these children's health and well-being are significant. For over two months, the vast majority of these children will not have access to nutritious meals like the ones they receive during the school year. We cannot accept this nutrition gap. Here in Washington, I can encourage and inform many people about the benefits of the Summer Food Service Program, but the decision whether or not to offer the program to needy children will always be a local one. By working together to provide these children with adequate nutrition during the summer we can improve this situation significantly. 

The Sobering Facts
The Child Nutrition Programs represent an effective and vital part of our nation's nutrition safety net. The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) serves about 27 million meals on a given day. Just over half of these meals are served free or at a reduced price. However, once summer vacation or the long vacations in year-round schools arrive, school meals aren't available for most children. In fact, only about a million children receive meals under the NSLP on a given day during the summer. Some of these children are participating in summer school, and some are on their regular track in year-round schools. In addition, the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) serves another 2 million lunches each day. As you can see, the combined number of meals served under both programs represents only a fraction of the free and reduced price lunches served each day during the regular school year.

We would like to see both programs increase participation, but it is particularly important for the SFSP to become more accessible as the number of schools providing summer classes or operating year-round is more limited than the total number of schools potentially available for the SFSP. The SFSP is intended to function as a nutrition link between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next, and for more than twenty-five years it has filled this role successfully in many communities. However, the SFSP is presently available in too few locations, with the result that the number of poor children benefiting from good, nutritious lunches under this program is unreasonably low. To put it another way, the 2 million lunches served under the SFSP per day are only about 12 percent of the free and reduced price school lunches served on a given day during the regular school year. These numbers are especially alarming because the SFSP is specifically designed to be operated in economically depressed areas where alternatives to school lunches are not readily available or where many children cannot afford them. 

Some children may not reside in eligible areas, but many do. To meet their needs, we must have more schools and community organizations to provide them. Nearly 20,000 school food authorities operate the NSLP in nearly 90,000 schools during the regular school year. By contrast, the total number of school sponsors in the SFSP in July 2000 was only 1,610, less than 10 percent of all school districts nationwide. Even adding in the schools operating under the NSLP during the summer months leaves a large number of unutilized schools that could serve as sponsors, sites or vendors in the SFSP. 

Recent USDA Initiatives
In recent years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has undertaken a number of initiatives to attract additional sponsors, particularly schools. USDA began by listening to people to find out what we could do in partnership to assist local operators or potential operators. USDA convened summits attended by school administrators, community activists and State personnel. These meetings were designed to acquaint local organizations, especially schools, with the benefits of the program and look for ways to increase participation. Based on what we learned at these summits, USDA has taken a number of actions.

In 2000, USDA published a final regulation that implemented several paperwork burden reduction provisions. We waived the eligibility documentation requirements for sites that have participated in the program during the current or previous two years and have been determined to be area-eligible. This regulation also streamlined the application process for sponsors that have participated successfully in the program during the same period of time. We restructured State agency monitoring requirements to target their efforts. 

We have also issued policy memoranda that increase State and sponsor flexibility and provide sample application forms which reflect the streamlined requirements for experienced sponsors and sites. Other materials advise local sponsors on topics ranging from improving nutrition education and the quality of meals served, to ways of building local partnerships and obtaining funding from the community. We have also recognized sponsors who have developed innovative ways of managing the program and have shared the best ideas with our State agencies and local partners. 

More recently, we reduced paperwork by creating a shorter application for experienced sponsors. Under the new rules, sponsors do not have to submit new site sheets every year unless there has been a change in operation. Finally, USDA has been working with State agencies to see that local sponsors receive adequate training in all aspects of the program. 

Bush Administration Commitment
The Bush Administration will build on these efforts in the coming years, and we are moving forward with new ideas. For last summer's program, we approved waivers allowing two school districts in California and three in Florida to operate the summer program under the rules and free meal reimbursement rates of the NSLP. While the reimbursement rate for free school meals is lower than the summer program rates, the school districts were able to streamline reimbursement procedures.

The school districts were also permitted to use many of the administrative and monitoring requirements of the school programs instead of summer rules in areas such as pre-authorization of sites, pre-approval of eating times, and required site visits. These waivers are to run for three years, so we do not yet have conclusive information about their effectiveness. However, the food service director of one of these school districts, Alisal Unified School District in California, believes her pilot worked “quite smoothly” and resulted in serving 150 to 200 meals a day that otherwise would not have been provided. A formal evaluation of these pilots is being conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., and we are eager to see the final results. The Department invites State agencies to identify additional school districts interested in such creative approaches to integrate summer feeding into the School Meal Programs.

The Lugar Initiative
Beginning this year, a more extensive three-year pilot was authorized by Congress in the Consolidated Appropriation Act of 2001 (Public Law 106-554). Its purpose is to assess what impact the elimination of the cost accounting provisions might have on program participation. The law eliminates the operating and administrative cost comparisons for schools, government sponsors, public and private nonprofit National Youth Sports Program sponsors, and public and private nonprofit residential camps. (Other private nonprofit sponsors continue to claim the lesser of meals times rates or actual costs.) 

This pilot, which was sponsored by Senator Lugar of Indiana, is being conducted in 14 States with low rates of participation in SFSP. This pilot will run for two more years, and we will evaluate the outcomes in time to review possible options as we approach reauthorization of the program in 2003. One of the pilot States is putting schools in contact with private nonprofit organizations that provide activities for children during the summer. The schools would provide the meals for children already enrolled in an established activity program. Some States are also identifying summer schools that do not provide any meal service and encouraging them to participate in either the National School Lunch Program or the SFSP, while others are encouraging existing sponsors to add sites in order to make the program more cost efficient. Sponsors are also being urged to publicize the program throughout the community by sending notices home at the end of school, and displaying posters announcing the location of sites in obvious places (e.g., grocery stores, WIC clinics, welfare offices, and libraries). 

An Appeal to Schools
Early next spring, States will begin to solicit applications and gear up for the 2002 SFSP program. If you sponsored the program last year, I wish to extend my sincere appreciation along with my hope that you will continue and perhaps expand to additional sites or extend the duration of the program. If you are not a current sponsor, I urge you to give serious consideration to becoming one and to operate as many sites as you can, including non-school sites that may not be able to sponsor the program themselves. I also encourage summer schools that have not provided meals through the NSLP and the School Breakfast Program to do so next year and in subsequent years if at all possible. Schools can also provide a valuable service to their communities by acting as vendors and supplying meals to community groups that want to sponsor the summer program but have no meal production facilities. Please Join Us We are committed to ensuring that no child is left behind, and this means caring for our children throughout the entire year whether or not school is in session. To make this commitment a reality, we need more partners at the local level who will provide this important benefit to their communities. I am also interested in hearing ideas from you at the State and local levels about the kinds of administrative improvements that you believe would make the program more efficient to operate. These ideas will be very important to us as we approach reauthorization in two years. In these and other ways, I sincerely hope that we can work together to make the Summer Food Service Program more available to those children who are most in need.