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School nutrition programs around the country have faced significant challenges in recent years, including supply chains for food and labor.
Throughout the 2022-2023 school year, the Keep Kids Fed Act (KKFA) provided schools additional financial support by temporarily increasing meal reimbursement rates for school meals. However, these increases will expire Friday, June 30.
In addition, the United States Department of Agriculture provided nearly $2.5 billion in relief funds through the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC), authorized under the CCC Charter Act. These resources, referred to as Supply Chain Assistance (SCA) funds, were distributed to School Food Authorities (SFAs) and local level program operations by state agencies, and USDA has received feedback that these funds helped SFAs meet financial challenges with elevated food and labor costs.
USDA wants to continue to support school nutrition professionals as they continue to navigate through challenges, so it is providing an additional $1.2 billion in SCA funds under the same authority (CCC Charter Act) to assist school programs in their efforts to provide consistent and nutritious school meals to children. The total allocation for Kansas is $12,343,464.
These SCA funds are a critical funding stream that will provide an additional financial resource for school districts to purchase domestic food products as part of school districts’ efforts to respond to these remaining supply chain challenges, enhance efforts to strengthen local food supply chains and help schools overcome financial and operational barriers.
The Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) will distribute this fourth round of SCA funding to eligible SFAs via the same formula used to distribute the first three rounds of funding. SCA funds remain limited to the purchase of unprocessed or minimally processed domestic food products.
As a reminder, the requirement to maintain no more than a three-month operating balance in the nonprofit food service account doesn’t impact a school’s eligibility for and/or receipt of SCA funds. In cases where a school food authority has an operating balance of more than three months, the state agency may approve net cash resources in excess of three months through a spend-down plan.
It is expected that the SCA funds will support SFA (School Food Authorities) operations during the 2023-2024 school year.
With the ending of the Keep Kids Fed Act, the following child nutrition program flexibilities allowed during the presidentially declared public health emergency are set to expire Friday, June 30:
The public health emergency ended May 11, 2023.
Additional updates from the KSDE Child Nutrition and Wellness (CNW) team include:
In this edition | Feature Story | Assessments and Accountability | Reporting and Operations Standards and Instruction | Student Health and Nutrition | Upcoming Events, Trainings and Recognition
Questions about this page contact:
Denise Kahler (785) 296-4876 dkahler@ksde.org
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