The published SY 2024-2025 Commodity Meal Rate for the period July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, is $0.30 per meal for NSLP schools. Additionally, USDA’s 12% provision dollars and the 20 million breakfast dollars for NSLP make the effective SY 2024-2025 NSLP rate $0.45 cents.

October is coming fast and the time to pledge to join TDA for the Farm Fresh Challenge is now. All National School Lunch Program and Child and Adult Care Food Program operators are encouraged to serve local foods, teach about local agriculture, and share their efforts on social media. We have new resources to help you achieve whichever tier you decide to strive for this year. Find the Success Guide, Word Games, new flashcards, and a tracking tool on Resources tab on SquareMeals.

The pledge form will be open until October 30, but remember to pledge by September 13 to receive promotional materials like "We Serve Local" buttons for staff, "Locally Grown" clings for your serving line, or "I Tried Local" stickers for your students. Let's make 2024 the most successful Farm Fresh Challenge year ever! Pledge now!

The F&N team is making good progress on determining what system changes are needed in the Texas Automated Nutrition System (TANS) to support Texas' nutrition programs. Learn more about the journey here!

Are you experienced and knowledgeable in school nutrition programs and/or have experience with auditing? The School Operations section of Food and Nutrition is hiring Compliance Monitors to conduct reviews of School Food Authorities. Job postings can be found here.

The Attachment B Upload module is found under the "Applications" tab in TX-UNPS. To complete the Attachment B Upload, the SFA must:
- Indicate whether they are using the TDA template school meal application,
- Upload the school meal application used by the SFA during School Year 24-25
- Upload the instructions to the school meal application
- Certify the Attachment B Upload module in TX-UNPS
- Submit the Attachment B Upload module.

School Food Authorities (SFA) must update their Attachment B in TX-UNPS if their meal counting and claiming procedures have changed. If the SFA selected "yes" in Question 24 on the CE Application, the SFA must revise their Attachment B and submit to TDA for approval.

An updated version of the SY 2024-2025 special provisions carryover reports are available here. 

The school year 2024-2025 Administrative Review (AR) and Procurement Review (PR) schedule is posted on SquareMeals. 

The Texas Department of Agriculture's Training & Development Team encourage our School Food Authorities to utilize the resources available through The Institute of Child Nutrition (ICN)'s "Back to School for 2024" series. Browse here to view trainings, resources, checklists, videos, and best practices for all roles in your operation.

Team Nutrition is pleased to share new resources to help Child Nutrition Program operators prepare for the road ahead! Team Nutrition’s Back-to-School webpage has ready-to-go menu planning, nutrition education, and school meal promotion resources that support the updates to the school nutrition standards published in the final rule titled, Child Nutrition Programs: Meal Patterns Consistent with the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Click the headline for more information.

TDA has revised the Spanish version of the Eligibility Determination Letters to Household to update the timeframe for requesting an appeal from 10 business days to 10 calendar days. The updated form is located on the NSLP Administration/Forms page on SquareMeals and the Household Applications page.

• SY24 Annual Inventory Physical Inventory Counts have been completed for all Food Distribution Program Regions. Warehouses will be reaching out to provide credit and/or in-kind replacement inventory following their Private Storage Losses.

• Inventory from Regions 1 and 2 has been transferred to Gold Star Foods and will be made available by July for SY25 orders. Please check your accounts via the Gold Star Foods system.

• Please attend your new warehouse inventory system training as they are being announced by respective State Contracted Warehouse. Your State Contracted Warehouse inventory system will be the inventory system used for SY25, so it is highly important you attend training and ask your questions directly with their staff.

• TX-UNPS will not be used for SY25 orders. It is currently closed for all State Contracted Warehouses.

• Ensure you are organizing your current storage space to make room for your SY25 USDA Foods and monitor your inventory in conjunction with your menu planning. If you have any questions regarding your menus and/or inventory, contact your Education Service Center representative.

• Lastly, as a reminder, keep your USDA Foods inventory levels less than 6MOH to maintain compliance with the NSLP for SY25.

**If your Procurement/Purchasing Department has requested a copy of the awarded contract for SY25, they will need to submit an open records request.** Visit this webpage below for further instructions.

Visit our SquareMeals page to check out which awards Texas schools have received and learn more about Healthy Meals Incentives Recognition Awards! Awardees receive national and local recognition, a digital toolkit, and travel stipend to attend a Summit in Las Vegas! The application deadline is June 30, 2025. Apply today!

Get ready for National School Lunch Week 2024 as we celebrate with the theme “School Lunch Pirates: Find Your Treasure”! This year, we will offer no-cost printed and digital materials that align with your student’s adventure in discovering a healthy school lunch fit for a pirate! Click the treasure map on our SquareMeals page to place your order today!

Be nationally recognized for your summer meal program! Visit SquareMeals to view updated and new resources to assist with the award application process! Watch our overview video, view our Application Toolkit for application assistance, and explore our Summer Activity Toolkit of curated nutrition activities and resources!

Explore USDA’s new training guide for reducing added sugars at school breakfast! Learn how to determine added sugars in foods and drinks, new added sugar limits, menu planning tips, and tips to reducing added sugar in recipes! Available in English and Spanish.

NSLP:
TDA has applied the yearly weighted average cost adjustment of further processed USDA Foods and Farm to School beginning mid-July 2024 to close out PY2024.

PY2025 Round #2 Ordering of Direct Delivery USDA Foods is completed. RAs can access WBSCM to generate a Requisition Status Report to update their records.

• Gold Star Foods has completed redistributing unclaimed cases from PY2024 to offset some truckloads requested for PY2025.

The annual redistribution of unused pounds for PY2024 is applied to all Recipient Agency accounts participating in USDA Foods for further processing to the respective State Accounts by processors begins on July 1, 2024, the due date to reconcile and submit to TDA is July 15, 2024. As processors submit their reconciliations, TDA will review, reconcile and apply equitable distributions against the original requested pounds for PY2025.

SFSP:
Recipient Agencies that confirmed their participation with TDA have had their funds loaded into FFAVORS for ordering through the last week of September 2024, contact their respective ESC Child Nutrition Specialist’s for program guidance and contact their respective DLA contacts for assistance with logging in or technical issues with FFAVORS. Please refer to SFSP-DoD FFV one-pager email sent in early to mid-May 2024.

USDA has given TDA the discretion to approve specific flexibilities and waivers for school districts experiencing an unanticipated school closure during School Year 2024-2025. These flexibilities include non-congregate service, meal service time exceptions, waiver of OVS requirements, parent pick-up flexibilities, service at the closed school site, and waiver of enrichment activities (if operating CACFP At-Risk during the closure). It also allows for SFSP and SSO to be operated at any time during the school year in the event of an unanticipated closure. Note that all non-congregate flexibilities will only be approved for a maximum of 10 calendar days at one time.

Schools experiencing a closure must submit the recently updated Unanticipated School Closure Notification Form currently published on the NSLP Administration/Forms page. Please refer to ARM Section 24, Disaster Situations, for specific guidance on operating during an unanticipated school closure.