Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act (HHFKA) required the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to issue new science-based nutrition standards to improve the nutritional quality of school meals.  The standards are based on the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine and are aligned with the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.  The lunch standards specify weekly and daily requirements for low/non-fat fluid milk, fruits, vegetables, meat/meat alternates, and whole grain-rich items.  The standards also set specifications for calories, sodium, saturated fat, and trans fat.  Similar requirements apply to school breakfasts.  USDA provides extensive in-person and web-based training and technical assistance to assist schools in implementing the new meal standards.  HHFKA also required School Food Authority (SFA) Directors to make changes to the pricing structure of foods sold in schools to ensure that reimbursements for free and reduced-price meals do not subsidize full-price meals.  Under the Paid Lunch Equity (PLE) provision, SFAs are required to generate the same level of revenues for paid lunches as the level obtained for lunches provided to students approved for free or reduced price meals.

This session will present findings on the impact of the PLE provision on paid lunch participation; data are taken from the first two waves (school years 2011-12 and 2012-13) of the Special Nutrition Program Operations Study (SNPOS), a national sample of School Food Authorities (SFAs) designed to track changes stemming from implementation of the HHFKA. We used multivariate analysis to examine changes in participation under different assumptions about SFA policies.  This session will describe the strategies used by SFA directors to overcome meal participation challenges; the strategies were compiled from qualitative interviews conducted with 9 SFA directors in May 2015.  The collective experiences and insights gathered through the in-depth discussions provide valuable guidance for SFA directors experiencing similar challenges and a range of approaches used to successfully implement the new meal standards.