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Transitioning Back to Paid Meals in School Year 2022-2023

" July 1, 2022 - This Fall, ‘Back to School’ will also mean ‘Back to Student Meal Rates’ for nutritious school meals. TDA has created resources to assist with notifying parents about this shift.
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July 1, 2022 - This Fall, ‘Back to School’ will also mean ‘Back to Student Meal Rates’ for nutritious school meals. The federal government’s pandemic-era waiver that granted and funded free school meals to all students via the Seamless Summer Option expired June 30, 2022. For the 2022-2023 school year, cafeterias will return to pricing school meals based on the student's eligibility.

Families will submit an application that schools will use to determine a child’s eligibility for free and reduced-price meals. Schools will notify the household of the child’s eligibility status. Household applications and letter templates are available on SquareMeals.org at: https://squaremeals.org/Programs/NationalSchoolLunchProgram/EligibilityandVerification/HouseholdApplications.aspx.

To assist schools in notifying families of this shift, TDA has developed a suite of resources that can be used to communicate the return of paid and reduced-price meals. Included in this suite is a one-pager that can be mailed with household applications as well as a new media release prototype. These resources are located at: https://squaremeals.org/Programs/NationalSchoolLunchProgram/BacktoStudentMealRates.aspx

Note that as of June 30, 2022, USDA has not published the Spanish version of the Nondiscrimination Statement (NDS), which has delayed the release of Spanish versions of some of these resources. They will be released as soon as the Spanish version of the NDS is published.

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Assistance available in English and Spanish. Please call 877-TEX-MEAL* (877-839-6325) for help.*
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