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FEDERAL SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAM

These state boards are: The Pennsylvania Department of Education, California Department of Education (CDE) and Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE).

Pennsylvania

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In the State of Pennsylvania, the various food nutrition programs run by the Pennsylvania Department of Education feed over a million school children on a daily basis. During the school calendar year of 2004/2005, the state availed over 186 million lunches to its children in the various schools. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education (2012), the state is concerned about the provision of proper and adequate nutrition which is considered to be essential to the learning process of every school going kid as it contributes positively towards the general student health. Among the food programs that the state runs are; school breakfast programs (SBP), NSLP, summer food service program (SFSP) and the child and adult care food program (CACFP). All these programs are run by a sub division of the department of education called the ‘Division of food and nutrition’ whose mission statement is “to promote access to healthy food choices among the commonwealth’s children to ensure readiness to learn, wellness, and sponsor compliance with federal child nutrition programs” ( Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2012).

In addition to the federal government requirements, Pennsylvania has gone an extra mile to ensure that its school feeding programs achieve the state’s individual goals and objectives. Among their major objectives has been to offer nutrition training opportunities and education to sponsors of the nutrition programs, carrying out compliance reviews that are consistent in terms of accountability and come with technical assistance, and offering nutrition curriculums which are age appropriate and in compliance with the standards of education. Lastly the state aims to be exemplary in all its program performances by having fiscal accountability such that recipients of their programs continue to access quality service in their expectations (Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2012).

The state education department first collaborated with the Penn State University in 1995 in an initiative dubbed the Project PA to provide assistance and training in the successful implementation of planning systems for menus for schools that was compliant with of school meals. Ever since then this partnership has flourished in assuring that state schools successfully transform their diets to healthy and nutritious meals (Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2012). It is the innovation of the initiative that has made it into a success story which has been able to attract nutrition grants from the USDA and has seen the initiative expand to cover other food programs that cover different school personnel levels families and community resources. In addition to such initiatives as the Project PA, the education department has also collaborated with various food service management companies (FSMC) under USDA guidelines to ensure that the food that it supplied and eventually consumed in schools is safe and of sound quality, while at the same time ensuring that the tax payers get the best possible value for their money by sourcing the foodstuffs at competitive prices (Ralston et al, 2008).

With the changes in technological advancements, the education department has taken up e-commerce in terms of implementing their web based system for the various suppliers to make their applications and to receive their payments through. The program is known as the ‘child nutrition program electronic application and reimbursement system (CN PEARS)’ and by 2012 was available in over 1,000 schools, both public and private for all the school feeding programs (Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2012). The introduction of the CN PEARS has enabled the state to run their programs efficiently as information on monthly and yearly applications and reimbursements can easily be located and analyzed through the internet.

Obesity is a very real threat to American children. In order to promote the consumption of healthy food in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the education department on 20th July 2007 enacted legislation, the School Nutrition Incentive Program (SNIP), to the effect that a supplemental reimbursement is provided for every lunch and breakfast that is served through the NSLP and SBP. The SNIP is part of the wellness policy that determines the standards of nutrition for all the beverages and consumed foods of all the schools that have adopted and implemented it. SNIP gives additional support in terms of finances to the schools that invest in nutritional health of their school children for the long-term. The SNIP initiative has been praised by many organizations in the country as a positive step by the PDE towards promoting the consumption of healthy and nutritious foodstuffs (Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2012).

Illinois

All school feeding programs in the state are run by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE). Among the programs that are undertaken by the ISBE include the NSLP, SBP and the summer food service program (SFSP). Like all the other food programs, the SFSP is federally funded via the USDA but in the state of Illinois it is the responsibility of the ISBE to overlook its implementation in all the schools that are under its administration. Like several other states in the US, the state of Illinois has over the years customized the way in which they administer their USDA grants. The state has integrated its food distribution program (FDP) into an electronic system that has greatly improved the efficiency of delivery, storage and accessibility of food throughout the state. This logistics monitoring system is known as the Illinois commodity system (ICS) which provides an online option that eases the management of products by the education board and suppliers. The ICS site has commodity bulletins that are updated monthly, delivery schedules, annual distributor order forms, food alerts, and commodity value among many other issues dealing with the NSLP (Jirka & Sneed, 2007).

One of the ISBE’s most innovative initiatives to deal with the supply and intake of nutritious food products in the state is the Healthier US School Challenge (HUSSC). In this challenge, various schools under the NSLP are judged based on their food programs and the kinds of meals that they offer to their students. The criteria upon which judgment is based is dependent on how the schools are striving to build through better food nutrition healthy school environments while at the same time encouraging their school children to participate in various practices of physical activities that will improve the overall health status of the students. To better improve on the success of the initiative, the ISBE announced that submissions for 2012, starting July1, will be judged based on a new criterion that puts more emphasis on breakfast, lunch with specific alignment with requirements on meal patterns of NSLP, and a new calculation method. In total for a school to enter the challenge, it has to be compliant on between 2 and 8 criteria for different levels of the awards. Among these criteria that must be met are; physical activity, involvement of the school in community wellness efforts, program outreach, and nutrition education (Jirka & Sneed, 2007).

Conclusion

By the federal government giving individual states the go ahead to customize the implementation of the NSLA of 1946, it has in effect improved the program as individual states feel that they own the process and as a result tailor make the programs to suit their individual needs. The enactment of the CN PEARS in Pennsylvania and Illinois’ ICS automated web and internet based systems have resulted in the states streamlining the provision of food and

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