National lunch program free and reduced lunch

Pennsylvania served more than million school lunches during the school year. These healthy meals help enhance our children's readiness to learn. How does it work? The NSLP is a federal and state reimbursement program for each meal served that meets federal requirements. All NSLP sponsors are required to offer free and reduced-price lunches to eligible children.

Sponsors are entitled to receive USDA commodities for each lunch they serve. The variety of commodities sponsors may receive depends on product availability and market prices. Who may participate? Any public school, intermediate unit, charter school, area vocational technical or career technology school, public residential child care institution, and tax exempt non-public school or residential child care institution may apply to be an NSLP sponsor.

Question: What information do you have on public school students who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch? In this indicator, public schools 2 including both traditional and charter are divided into categories by FRPL eligibility. In fall , the percentage of public school students in high-poverty schools was higher than the percentage in low-poverty schools 24 vs. At the other end of the school poverty spectrum, a nearly opposite pattern is evident. Low-poverty schools are defined as public schools where Schools with missing FRPL data are not included in this figure.

The Act also created the Community Eligibility Provision CEP , an option that allows high-poverty schools to offer free meals to all students. To learn more about CEP, please see:. USDA also encourages school districts to use locally-produced foods in school meals and to use "farm-to-school" activities to spark students' interest in trying new foods.

More than 4 in 10 U. S school districts reported participating in farm-to-school activities, which includes serving local foods, in the or school years.

To learn more about the characteristics of school districts likely to serve local foods, please see:. All figures are based on data available as of January and are subject to revision.

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