How is the National School Lunch Program Working in Indian Country

Child Nutrition Programs, National School Lunch Program

Tanya H. Lee

12/9/14

New guidelines for the National School Lunch Program are aimed at providing the nation’s children with healthy, age-appropriate meals in an effort to reduce childhood obesity and improve the overall well-being of kids, especially poor kids, across the country.
A Matter of National Security
The federal government established the school lunch program in the early 1930s to try to prevent widespread childhood malnutrition during the Depression and to support struggling farmers by having the federal government buy up surplus commodity foods. By 1942, 454 million pounds of surplus food was distributed to 93,000 schools for lunch programs that benefited 6 million children.
But when the U.S. joined World War II, the U.S. Armed Forces needed all of the surplus food U.S. farmers were producing. By April 1944, only 34,064 schools were participating in the school lunch program and the number of children being served had dropped to 5 million.
In the spring of 1945, Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, a former school principal, told the House Agriculture Committee that as many as 40 percent of rejected draftees had been turned away owing to poor diets. “Whether we are going to have war or not, I do think that we have got to have health if we are going to survive,” he testified. Within a year, Congress passed legislation to appropriate money to support the program on a year-by-year basis and by April 1946, the program had expanded to include 45,119 schools and 6.7 million children.
In 1946, Congress established a permanent National School Lunch Program (NSLP). In the legislation, adequate child nutrition was explicitly recognized as a national security priority. The program was administered by the states, which were required to match federal dollars. Nutritional standards were set by the federal government, and states were required to provide free and reduced priced lunches to children who could not pay.

Nawayee Center School in Minneapolis serves 55 American Indian high school students. (Nawayee Center School)

Childhood Obesity Epidemic
Fast-forward half a century. By 2009, the Department of Defense reported that more recruits were being rejected for obesity than for any other medical reason. This was around the same time that First Lady Michelle Obama was taking on childhood obesity as a national health crisis.
Childhood obesity, reports the Centers for Disease Control, has more than doubled in children (to 18 percent) and quadrupled in adolescents (to 21 percent) in the past 30 years. In 2012, more than 30 percent of American children and adolescents were overweight or obese. These children are at increased risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, bone and joint problems, sleep apnea, and social and psychological problems such as stigmatization and poor self-esteem, according to the CDC. By 2030, 50 percent of Americans are predicted to be obese, according to the Harvard School of Public Health.
In the American Indian community, the rate of obesity is even higher. In 2010, the Indian Health Service reported that 80 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native adults and about 50 percent of AI/AN children were overweight or obese.

Nawayee Center School garden and raised bed. Students built the fence around the garden in the second year. Since then they have built flower boxes, started doing seed saving and added recycling and composting. (Nawayee Center School)

Obese and overweight children have access to too many cheap calories with too little nutritional value, leading to the paradox of malnourished overweight children. Poor nutrition, often in the form of too much sugar and other simple carbohydrates, can lead to diabetes, which is rife in AI/AN communities.
Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act
Michelle Obama’s child health initiative included her “Let’s Move!” exercise campaign, the first-ever task force on child obesity and her backing for the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which passed Congress with bipartisan support in 2010.
The act set new standards, which went into effect in early 2012, for school lunches. These include reduced calories, reduced sugar and reduced sodium combined with increased fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains. In some cases, schools’ inability to prepare nutritionally adequate, attractive, kid-friendly meals under the new guidelines has led them to drop out of the NSLP altogether. Despite the fact that as of September 2013, only 524 out of 100,000 schools participating in the NSLP, or one half of one percent had dropped out, news coverage has been extensive, complete with photos of unappetizing meals, accounts of student protests and a good deal of criticism of Michelle Obama, who as the point person for the healthy school lunch initiative, is an obvious target.

Nawayee Center School students working in the garden. (Nawayee Center School)

Poor Children Need School Lunches
But the schools dropping out of the program are mostly schools with few students who qualify for free and reduced-price school lunches. The federal government mandates that schools participating in the NSLP provide free lunches for children from families whose incomes are 130 percent of the poverty level or less. That is, if the poverty level for a family of four is $24,000 per year, then children from families of four whose income is under about $31,200 per year are eligible for free lunches. Reduced-price lunches must be provided for children from families with incomes between 130 percent and 185 percent of the poverty level. So if the poverty level is $24,000 for a family of four, children from families of four earning between $31,200 and $44,400 are eligible for reduced priced lunches. Reduced price lunches may cost no more than $0.40.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 68 percent of AI/AN students are eligible for free and reduced-price school lunches, compared with only 28 percent of white students. USDA data indicate that 70 percent of children receiving free lunches through the NSLP are children of color, as are 50 percent of students receiving reduced-price lunches.
The very public criticism of the new guidelines poses a threat to AI/AN and other children of color, as well as poor children in general. If the loudest voices cause the federal government to back down on the nutrition standards, the children who will be most affected are those who rely on school breakfasts, lunches, snacks and summer food programs for a significant portion of their nutrition—that is, poor children, the ones receiving free and reduced-price lunches, as do more than two-thirds of AI/AN children in public and non-profit private schools.

Students at the Nawayee Center School designed and built the garden, and they do all of the planting, weeding, watering and harvesting. The lush garden supplies food for the school lunch program. Students have learned to preserve fruits and vegetables for the winter. (Nawayee Center School)

Successful School Lunch Programs in Indian Country
Not everyone is having trouble meeting the new guidelines.
Joe Rice (Choctaw), executive director of the Nawayee Center School in Minneapolis, says his school started serving healthier meals to its 55 American Indian high schoolers long before the new guidelines went into effect. “We’re sponsored by the Minnesota Department of Education so we have a licensed food and nutrition service that allows us instead of buying food from the local district to buy through a caterer who serves healthier food in line with our diabetes initiative. The fresh food from our garden and the healthier food from the caterer mean that we’re addressing one of the two modifiable risk factors for diabetes, which is diet. We’re getting away from sugar and saturated fat and more into healthy whole foods.”
And that’s having an impact. The school screens the kids every year and those who have been with the program for a while “typically have better blood glucose levels, and they report exercising and eating more healthy foods throughout the week. We also see healthier BMIs for the kids who have been in the program longer. Overall, we get good health results.”
The garden is a kid-centered endeavor. The students designed and built the garden and decide what crops to grow. The garden, says Rice, is “reconnecting kids to the earth. I remember the first time we had some stuff from the garden, the kids refused to eat it because it came out of the ground.” It also serves as a means of teaching biology, botany, math and language. “We found that gardening could be the starting point for a very rich curriculum and for cultural preservation and revitalization.”
The STAR School just outside Flagstaff, Arizona, serves about 120 Navajo students in grades pre-K through 8. There, too, gardening is a key component of the nutrition program, although until the school can get its gardens and food safety practices certified by the government, garden produce is used only for cooking classes and community events.

Seventh and eighth graders at the STAR School shucking Navajo white corn in the early fall of 2014. The corn was then shaved and stored in the freezer to be used later. (STAR School)

Louva Montour (Diné) is food services manager. She says the school has had no trouble meeting the new guidelines. STAR School has its own garden and greenhouses, and students also work on a Navajo farm about 20 miles from the school, where they help with planting, watering, weeding and harvesting. “It really helps that they get hands-on experience working with food, from planting, even preparing the soil, composting (Our kids know a lot about composting!), the whole cycle,” says Montour.
Montour gives an example of the value of having kids grow the food they are going to eat: “We’re on our third year now using our salad bar. When we started putting out different types of vegetables, like beets, the students didn’t really know what beets were and they weren’t really trying it. But then they grew some in our greenhouse. Once they harvested them—those things are really big, about half a pound!—kids were saying ‘What is it?’ and ‘I want to eat it.’ They cleaned it and then we just cut it up right there because they wanted to eat it right there. And we let them because that’s the time for them to try it, when they’re willing.”
Beets have become a salad bar favorite, she says, as have other unlikely vegetables such as kale. Even though the school cannot yet use produce from its own gardens or those of local Navajo farmers, they are able to get local and organic produce through their regular food distributor who works with local producers.
Special Circumstances in Indian Country
Dianne Amiotte-Seidel, Oglala Sioux, project director/marketing coordinator for an ANA grant awarded to the InterTribal Buffalo Council in South Dakota, which is a coalition of 56 tribes committed to reestablishing buffalo herds on Indian lands in a manner that promotes cultural enhancement, spiritual revitalization, ecological restoration, and economic development.
Amiotte-Seidel has already more than met the grant’s requirement that she introduce bison meat, which is much healthier for kids than beef, into eight school lunch programs, but it hasn’t been easy. “You can’t just put buffalo meat in the schools. You have a lot of different steps to take and each state is different,” she says.

A child at Taos Pueblo school finished her buffalo entree first! This is one of the schools included in the ANA grant awarded to the InterTribal Buffalo Council. (Dianne Amiotte-Seidel)

In order for a school to serve bison, “a tribe has to have enough buffalo to supply the school for one meal a week or a month, or whatever, and then they have to have a USDA plant nearby. They have to be willing to sell the buffalo meat to the school for the price of beef and they have to be able to have a supplier from a USDA plant take the meat to the school. The meat needs to bear a child nutrition label. The school has to be able to have a supply area big enough store the bison meat they need for the year, since tribes usually only do their harvest once a year.”
Amiotte-Seidel adds, “The biggest obstacle is the requirement to have USDA-certified slaughtering plants, because on the reservations that I’m dealing with, let’s use Lower Brule, for example. Lower Brule is four or five hours away from a certified USDA plant. They have to haul buffalo four to five hours to have USDA certify the meat for the school.”
This is one area where perhaps guidelines should be modified to better fit the unique circumstances in Indian Country and other areas where they present a burden so severe that the NSLP fails to meet its original goal—feeding poor children—as well as it could.

Works Progress Administration Hot Lunches for a Million School Children

By Ellen S. Woodward;
Assistant Administrator;
Works Progress Administration

• One million undernourished children have benefited by the Works Progress Administration’s school lunch program. In the past year and a half 80,000,000 hot well-balanced meals have been served at the rate of 500,000 daily in 10,000 schools throughout the country.
• This work of rehabilitating underprivileged children is supervised in all instances by competent WPA workers, who while earning money with which to clothe and feed their own families, are given an opportunity for wider training to equip them to take their places in private employment when the opportunity arises. On March 31, 1937, the projects employed nearly 12,000 needy economic heads of families.
• The School Lunch Program, like all other WPA projects, must be sponsored by tax-supported public bodies. Boards of Education usually are the official sponsors of the school lunch programs. Many civic organizations and individual patrons, however, may, and often do, render very valuable assistance by cooperating unofficially with the legitimate sponsors. The active interest of Parent-Teacher Associations all over the country, has been an important factor in the universal success with which these projects have met.
• School lunch projects have aroused such community interest that in some instances, South Carolina, for example, members of various civic organizations and other responsible citizens have formed Advisory Councils, which actively support this work by contributions of food, equipment, and sometimes money.
• The school lunch projects were originally intended to serve only children from relief families, but experience taught that growing children need a hot mid-day meal irrespective of their financial condition. It was found also that many children from homes where there was an adequate supply of certain kinds of food, were not receiving the proper kind of diet. It has become the policy in many communities, therefore, to serve a hot lunch to all the school children who care to partake. Parent-Teacher Associations have been largely responsible for making arrangements in many instances, whereby parents of children, who can afford it, contribute food supplies. This, however, is generally voluntary, and in no case is any distinction made in the lunch rooms between those who do and those who do not make a contribution.
• Many of the children, who are fed on WPA projects, come from homes where milk is a luxury. In some instances, teachers have reported that nearly all their pupils who partake of the school lunch, have no meal during the 24 hours of the day other than that furnished on the project. For many children, who are required to leave home early in the morning and travel long distances after school hours to reach their homes, the WPA lunch constitutes the only hot meal of the day. In an even greater number of cases, children come to school with either no breakfast at all or a meager one at best.
• Only those who have had occasion to witness the type of lunch that many of the children were bringing to school before the inauguration of the WPA, can fully understand or appreciate the value of those projects.
• Insufficient or improper food takes not only a physical toll, but a mental toll as well. Children after all are sensitive beings. In some instances, children, from underprivileged families have been known to slip away along to eat their lunches in some secluded spot–ashamed to have the other school children witness their meager fare.
• In some of the poorer communities of Georgia, for example, many of the children brought only cold bread or baked sweet potatoes. Sometimes a child’s lunch consisted of a biscuit and a piece of fried fish. If any meat at all was included, it was usually fat white meat. Prior to the inauguration of the WPA school lunch projects, a cold sweet potato or a poorly cooked biscuit spread with fat constituted the usual lunch of many children in the rural communities of South Carolina.
• Before the institution of the WPA projects, many children, in certain sections of Colorado, were reported to be bringing for lunch a piece of corn bread with molasses or a cold pancake. The common kind of meat found in the children’s lunches–when there was meat–was salt pork. In many of the rural districts the lunches which were brought, were frozen or half-frozen by noon.
• Even after the establishment of the WPA project, an effort was made to have each child in certain Colorado communities bring his or her own bread from home to supplement the hot dishes. This had to be discontinued because the bread that the children brought was not fit to eat. It was dirty, dry and even mouldy.
• South Carolina, which feeds more than 77,000 children daily in over 2300 public schools, has the largest WPA school lunch program of all the states, except New York State, in which New York City along foods a daily average of 37,230 children.
• All school children, who desire the hot lunch in South Carolina, are permitted to partake. Sponsors and co-sponsors make contributions of everything from money to beef on the hoof, and the parents of children, who can afford to do so, also contribute small amounts of food or money. Parents’ weekly contribution for a child may be a box of cocoa, a can of tomatoes, a quart of milk–or if they contribute money, it is usually 10 cents–2 cents a day.
• School attendance has increased and classroom work has improved in every school in South Carolina where the school lunch project operates. Satisfactory gains in weight have been noted in previously undernourished school children. In Greenville County, for example, children, who were weighed at the beginning of the project, have been weighed again at the end of each five-week period. The records showed an average gain in weight of from three to eight pounds per child for the first five-week period.
• Teachers in Decatur County, Georgia, declare that the school attendance for children, who are fed on three WPA school lunch projects, has increased 80 percent as a result of the wholesome, well-balanced, nourishing noonday meals which are served daily in the schools.
• Through the cooperation of the Decatur County Health Commissioners, a weight chart was made for each child, and records have been taken at regular intervals. The average increase in weight has been shown to be from two to five pounds per month. Higher marks also have been made, some children being promoted to A–or high section of their classes–for the first time since they entered school. Greater general alertness, better deportment, and an improved attitude toward teachers and classmates are among the many manifested gains.
• A school lunch project in Bryan County, Georgia, employed three WPA workers to prepare and serve hot mid-day meals to 200 children. The food was furnished by the local community through donations, supplemented by supplies from the Surplus Commodities Division.
• Henry Ford, who has displayed an active interest in the health and welfare of his neighbors in Bryan County where he has an estate, has taken over on his own payrolls the three workers formerly paid by the WPA. He also has supplied the school lunch project with seventeen dozen each of certain dishes, spoons, and other tableware and has furnished tables and chairs, so that all the children may sit down together for their noonday meal.
• In many Vermont towns, responsible groups of people, including the Parent-Teacher Associations and service and civic clubs, have cooperated with the WPA to provide a valuable hot lunch project and have been rewarded by watching the steady mental and physical development of the children fed.
• Weight records on Vermont projects taken at the beginning of the school lunch project and again at the close, show an average gain of from two to four pounds per child. Teachers also report an increase in energy, greater accomplishment in school work, and a marked improvement in the general appearance of the pupils.
• Educators, health officers and state officials in Minnesota agree that increased. weight, great concentration in the classroom and fewer absences from school are some of the immediate gains resulting to children who are being fed on the WPA school lunch projects. They state that the hot lunch is of particular value to the children of unemployed parents whose food budget has been reduced to a minimum, or below the amount required for proper growth and health protection. For many of the children in Minnesota and elsewhere, the school lunch is not only the best, but sometimes the only adequate meal of the day.
• To further this work of overcoming malnutrition and preventing its further progress, certain public tax-supported bodies in Minnesota have sponsored allied projects for which the WPA has supplied the labor. In some instances, milk stations provide mid-morning lunches for the needy; and in several poor districts, where children are known to leave home on almost empty stomachs milk and graham crackers are served at school before the beginning of classes.
• In New York City alone, one WPA project employs 2,346 persons who serve free lunches to thousands of pupils in over 1,000 schools. Health records show uniformly marked improvement in the children’s physical condition, and scholastic records show a parallel upward trend. Teachers state that pupils, who once exhibited sullen unresponsiveness, have become alert, interested, and in many cases, above the average in intelligence.
• Dr. Louise Stanley, Chief of the Bureau of Home Economics, U. S. Department of Agriculture, expressing, in a recent letter to the Director of the Division of Women’s and Professional Projects, her appreciation of the work performed under the school lunch program, declared:
  

  I have been very much impressed with what this has meant in making available to school children much-needed food …. The meals, where I have seen them, have been attractive, well-served, and palatable, and have contributed much in setting food standards and good food habits for the children.

• Through the daily service of warm, nourishing food, prepared by qualified, needy women workers, the WPA is making it possible for many underprivileged children of the present to grow into useful, healthy citizens of the future.

End Summer Child Hunger Now!

• Marian Wright Edelman President, Children’s Defense Fund

  
  

nata_vkusidey via Getty Images

Spring is almost in full swing and summer is just around the corner. Millions of children in America can’t wait for summer vacation, but for millions of poor children who rely on school meals it’s a mixed blessing.

I qualify for free and reduced lunch. I can get a free breakfast, I can get like a muffin, juice, anything like that, in the morning, and then lunch, I don’t have to pay, so I can get whatever I wanted for lunch. So I’ve always been able to eat at school for lunch and breakfast.

Linda Ransom is a Columbus, Ohio high school senior and the winner of a Children’s Defense Fund Beat the Odds^® scholarship whose family struggles to make ends meet. When Linda was seven her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and the medical crisis led to a family financial crisis. Linda’s mother lost her job, and with a mountain of medical bills is still trying to catch up ten years later. They’ve been homeless for stretches of time. Food has often been beyond their means. Linda says, “If we didn’t have any food at home, I knew I could get some at school, and sometimes I could take a couple things from the breakfast line and I could just save it for later, so when I got home, if I was hungry, I could eat it.”

Hunger doesn’t take a summer vacation and poor children like Linda who rely on free and reduced price breakfast and lunch during the school year to keep the wolves of hunger at bay face a long summer of food deprivation. “It was hard without school during the summer, but being able to qualify for something like food stamps or having a food pantry near us, that helped a lot,” Linda says, but at the end of the month, “it was kind of like a hit-or-miss kind of situation.” 

Hit or miss. No child in rich America should go hungry this or any summer, especially when 100 percent federally funded summer feeding programs are available if local officials and communities apply for or use them. But more than 1 in 4 families with children are food insecure and struggling to keep food on the table. The federal Summer Nutrition Programs could help millions more children escape hunger this summer by providing meals if responsible adults act now. The need is urgent. Although 19.7 million children received free or reduced price lunches during the 2013-2014 school year, only 3.2 million children – 16.2 percent – participated in the Summer Nutrition Programs.

If local school boards, community groups, faith congregations, mayors, and county representatives act now, they should be able to get 100 percent federally funded Summer Nutrition Programs in their area or add more if there already are some summer food sites. The federal Summer Food Service Program and the “Seamless Summer” option offered through the National School Lunch Program are designed to replace the regular school year breakfast and lunch programs. Meals provided through the Summer Nutrition Programs also can link children without summer learning opportunities, camps or other costly options to educational and recreational programming to keep them learning, active and safe during school vacation. Summer feeding programs also create jobs for food preparers, servers, bus drivers and others.

Schools, community recreation centers, playgrounds, parks, places of worship, day and residential summer camps, housing projects, migrant centers, and Native American reservations are among places that can serve as summer feeding program sites. Many more sites are needed to fill the summer hunger gap for millions of children. Far too many communities have no sites at all or have sites difficult for children without transportation to reach. Check in now with your school officials, mayors and county executives to learn what they are doing to prevent childhood hunger. Some questions to ask include:

• How many children receiving school year breakfasts and lunches will be served by Summer Food Service Programs?  What steps have they taken or will they take immediately to get more summer feeding sites up and running?
• How are parents notified about free summer food options?
• Are there district school buses that could be outfitted to deliver summer meals to inaccessible rural areas?
• How many weekend and holiday meal backpacks are provided to children within the Summer Food Service Programs? Has your school district reached out to seek community support for these backpacks?
• In districts with large percentages of children in housing projects, have you or local officials asked housing authorities to make sure they get food to hungry children?
• Are faith communities and service organizations with kitchens in your community aware of the 100 percent federally funded resources and planning to provide summer meals this summer? Do they know about the Children’s Defense Fund’s Freedom Schools^® program that provides summer reading enrichment and food to stop summer learning loss and hunger among low-income children?

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been working very hard to reach more children and is testing exciting new ways to help overcome barriers blocking summer meals for hungry children. Some communities are using mobile vans to transport meals. Others use electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards to transfer money to help families purchase extra food for children in the summer. When 4.9 million households, including 1.4 million with children, had no cash income in fiscal year 2014 and depended only on food stamps to stave off hunger, every public official, congregation, and school system needs to use every tool available to help keep children from going hungry over three long summer months.

Check the Summer Meals Toolkit on the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service’s Summer Feeding Service Program website to learn more about becoming a Summer Meal Champion in your community or call the National Hunger Hotline at 1-866-348-6479. There is no reason why there should be a single hungry child in America. Please act now before the school year ends to allow millions of children to take a real school vacation without hunger pains.

School Lunch Software Demo contact Wordware Inc.

Shady Lane Elementary School Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin Nutrition News March 2016

Nutrition News March 2016

If your family lunch account is low ($5.00 positive or less) or is

in the negative, you should be receiving an automated low balance email reminder from Wordware. If you are not getting this email reminder, please check your junk box and be sure to click to allow it! If you are still not getting the email, please call 262-

250-6462 and verify with us that we have the correct email address that you want in your family’s lunch account. You can also still register your account online at https://family.wordwareinc.com. You will need a family key in step 2 of the registration. Call 262-250-6462, or email

erdjea@sdmfschools.org to request yours. Please monitor your lunch account often! Did you know?

Students of all ages love the fresh pre bagged veggies they can

quickly grab from the veggie bar! The bags have a variety of veggies inside that equal a one cup serving. They get a choice of humus or low fat ranch dip for thecarrots, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, cherry tomatoes and cucumbers in any combination that might be served that day. This month’s Star Foodis... Broccoli!

 

Fun Broccoli Facts:

 

Broccoli is related to cauliflower, kale, cabbage, turnips, rutabagas and Brussels sprouts.

California produces almost all the broccoli sold in the USA!

 

Broccoli heads are made up of little buds that are ready to flower.

Nutrition Facts of 3oz of Broccoli

Vitamin C

42.0mg 70%

Vitamin A

400.0IU 8%

Dietary Fiber

2.0mg 8%

Q: What do you get when you cross broccoli and a vampire?

A: Count Broccula!

Kearney Public Schools - electronic point of sale system to manage lunch accounts

Dear Parent / Guardian:

 

The start of the 2013-2014 school year will begin soon. The Bearcat Diner staff is busy getting ready for the new school year. Elementary schools will continue to have an “A” and “B” choice at lunch. We will once again offer the option of “restaurant pizza” at the Middle Schools and High School due to the popularity of this option. The restaurant pizza meal will be priced at $3.00 to help offset the higher cost for this item. We will still offer two other options at the regular meal price on the days we serve restaurant pizza.

 

We will be using our electronic point of sale system to manage lunch accounts as we have in the past.  All students will be using their 5 digit student ID number and be expected to memorize it for use in the cafeterias. (We will have lists at the cashier area to help those that forget it). The lunch ID number is the same as their student ID # and will remain the same throughout the student’s time in the school system.

 

Now is a good time to start sending in payments to get your family lunch account ready to go. The Bearcat Diner will not extend credit to families for purchase of meals or a la carte food items. It is necessary to keep money in the family account so students can continue to purchase against it. Remember: Your Lunch account is a debit system.

 

It is your responsibility to manage your family lunch account balance. Please make checks payable to Bearcat Diner. We will notify families when their balances start to get low. If the family account balance falls to zero or is in the negative, the students will be asked to pay cash. The Bearcat Diner will not extend credit. Payment to your account can be dropped off at your school or mailed to 4611 Avenue N (Sunrise Middle School). We prefer that you do not mail cash. For your convenience a payment drop off box behind City Hall along with the other utility payment drop off boxes is available. Kearney Public Schools has a program called e~Funds For Schools that allows parents additional payment options. E-Funds is a way to make payment to your child’s school lunch account, via the internet, using a credit card or transferring money from your checking account. Call for information on how to use this feature.

 

Students from families whose income is below certain designated levels are eligible for free meals or meals at a reduced rate. To determine if your family qualifies, your family must complete an application. Enclosed please find a Free or Reduced Priced Meal Application. You only need to fill out one application per family, but be sure to include all family members on the one application. The application information is kept confidential. A new application MUST be completed every school year.

 

Bryant, Central, Emerson, Kenwood, Meadowlark, Northeast, Sunrise Middle School, Horizon Middle School, and the High School will have breakfast programs for the 2013-2014 school year.

 

The Bearcat Diner will provide a detailed lunch account summary only upon request.We do offer many options to allow families to monitor their family lunch account: 1) Call anytime between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday for your account balance; phone numbers are 698-8159 (Janet), 698-8158 (Terrie). If no one answers at the time you will always be able to leave a voice message and someone will return your call as soon as possible. 2) If you have Internet access you may email Janet at janet.bugay@kearneypublic.org to inquire about your balance or check the website at www.wordwareinc.com (call to get your Family ID # and your Pin #). You may follow the “Monthly Payment Schedule” provided to all families at the beginning of each school year. 4) The Bearcat Diner utilizes an Automated Calling System that calls weekly notifying you if your account balance is getting low or is in the negative. 

 

If you have a change in address, phone number or family status, please notify our office so we can keep our records current. To notify our office please call 698-8158. Thank you for participating in the school food service program!

Manitowoc Public School District - Menus

https://family.wordwareinc.com

Technology solutions for the cafeteria and beyond. The Lunch Cashier System software is designed for schools and businesses that need to manage meal accounting information. 

 

 Lunch Account Software  /  lunch Menu 

Tri-Center Community School District IA - Lunch Program & Menus

Tri-Center Community School District | 33980 310th St. | Neola, IA 51559

Month	Breakfast	Lunch
April	Breakfast	Lunch
March	Breakfast	Lunch

School Lunch / Breakfast / Milk Rates Grades PK-5 Computerized Family Accounts Lunch    $2.45 Milk    $.80 Breakfast    $2.00 Grades 6-12 Computerized Family Accounts Lunch    $2.85 Milk    $.80 Breakfast    $2.30 Adult $3.35 per day *Bread, Fruit and Milk served with Lunch -- served daily * Menu is always subject to change Pre K-2nd Milk Break  - $75.00 yearly

General Information on Free and Reduced Price School Meals (Revised May, 2015) Instructions for Completing the Application for Free and Reduced Price School Meal 2015-2016 Application for Free and Reduced Price School Meals AND the hawk-i/Medicaid Information Form for 2015-2016 Waiver Statement 2015-16 Wellness Policy

Family Lunch Account Login1.  Click on Family Login in the top right hand corner. 2.  Follow the directions from there.  You will need to set up a new user account. 3.  Choose the Second Box.  You will need your Family ID and your Family Pin.  If you do not know these, please contact Kelly Dollen at 712-485-2257.   kdollen@tctrojans.org

Burns Science and Technology Charter School - pre-pay by credit or debit card for student meals

Parents may now pre-pay by credit or debit card for student meals. Please visit: https://family.wordwareinc.com/


In order for parents to create an account, they must know their students activation code. Parents can retrieve the activation code by emailing Mrs. Harriet Wood at woodh@burnsscitech.org or Mrs. Crystal Faulkner at faulknerc@burnsscitech.org.


All pre-payments made online will instantly reflect on the students account.

Elkton Public School - School Lunch Software/ Nutrition Software - Family Login

 Elkton Public School - School Lunch Software/ Nutrition Software - Family Login

School Lunch Software/ Nutrition Software - Family Login

Has your child mentioned a change in what is served for school lunch? Due to new guidelines government, a change has occurred in what and how much food is being served to students at lunch. These handed down from the United States Department of Agriculture focus national “Healthy Plate” dietary guidelines.

Our school lunch program must serve the follow amount of foods groups Fruits:

School Website: https://elkton.k12.sd.us/

Alcester-Hudson Schools - Instructions for Wordware Family Login / School Lunch Software

The Alcester-Hudson School District includes the rural communities of Alcester and Hudson located in southeast South Dakota.  This district encompasses 176 square miles including some of Union and Lincoln County. This district is an agricultural based community with newer settled families who are escaping from the large cities, as well as many life-long residents.

The Alcester-Hudson School serves approximately  281 students, with 153 in grades K-6, 42 in Junior High and 86 High School students.

The Alcester-Hudson Schools is  fully accredited by the South Dakota Department of Education and is a member of the Southeast Area Educational Co-op​.

Instructions for Wordware Family Login / School Lunch Software

Lunch Calender/ Lunch Menu / Nutrition Information

Software to replace school lunch tickets in Onalaska

ONALASKA, Wis. – Here’s a scenario: You’re an Onalaska parent, and you give your high school student, Junior, $2 per day to buy lunch in the a la carte line.

You hope he chooses a balance of nutritious foods, but you have no way of knowing whether he’s blowing the whole $2 to buy cookies every day.

Next year, if you doubt Junior’s dining decisions, you need only phone somebody at the school district’s food service program to get a report of his a la carte purchases, thanks to a new software program approved Monday night by the Onalaska School Board.

The ability to generate such reports is only one advantage for the district, said Sue Black, who runs the food service program.

The Wordware software program, which already is being used in Holmen and West Salem, also will make it easier for the district to collect money and parents to pay money.

With the software, each family will have one account to cover any number of students. Parents deposit money into the account, and the students are each assigned a four-digit code they punch in when they get food at school.

Black said parents can pay for two weeks worth of lunches at a time or a whole semester, depending on their preference.

Parents will be notified, probably by mail at first, when it’s time to put more money into the account. Sometime next year, Black said, she hopes to have an automatic telephone notification system.

The software will mean less work for school personnel collecting the money and passing out lunch tickets, Black said.

Black said problems with students using another student’s code have been rare in other districts, and to make sure it doesn’t happen, Black plans to have a picture appear on the terminal that should match the face of the student who punches in the code.

The software will cost about $18,000, which will be paid for out of a $69,000 surplus in the food service fund. Superintendent John Burnett told the board that money could not be used to help with the district’s budget woes in the general fund.

In all, the food service budget will use $43,000 of that surplus next year, including money for new lunch-related equipment at the high school and Irving Pertzsch Elementary.

The board also approved a nickel per meal increase for next year, except for adult lunch prices.

In other business,

n The board approved a $429,550 capital improvements budget for next year, including $263,000 in spending given immediate approval. The other roughly $166,000 in spending must wait until at least October, at which time enrollment figures will be in and the district will have a better handle on its final budget.

The board approved establishment of an American Sign Language club at the high school next year.

Randy can be reached at (608) 782-9710, Ext. 446, orrerickson@lacrossetribune.com.

Ashwaubenon School District - Manage your Meal Account (Wordware Nutrition Software)

Welcome to the Ashwaubenon School District where we have a long-standing history of high academic achievement and student opportunities . We provide a comprehensive PK-12 educational program with instruction at all levels to meet the needs of all students regardless of their differences in abilities, interests, and learning styles. Our extensive co-curricular program enables our students to become well-rounded individuals.

Ashwaubenon is unique in the region for our world language program in which German and Spanish are offered to students from Grade 1 to Grade 12, and for being one of the first school districts to implement a community service graduation requirement.

As a district we are committed to: providing the highest quality programs, services, and staff,maintaining a healthy and safe learning environment, serving as proactive agents of change, being responsible stewards of district resources, engaging our community in the educational process, and monitoring and evaluating results for continuous improvement.

Payment Options & Account Balances

METHOD OF PAYMENT We are pleased to offer parents several meal payment options: Elementary children can turn payment envelopes in to their teachers or main office. Secondary students can turn envelopes in to the cashiers. Phone in credit card to the Business Office at 920.492.2905, Ext. 1006. Automatically withdrawn electronically from checking account or credit card. Manage your Meal Account (Wordware)  or  Pay Online (e-Funds). You are in full control of your account. By providing your home and/or work email address, an email notification informing you of the student’s name, purpose of the payment, and amount will be sent to you each time that a payment is to be processed. ACCOUNT BALANCES If you would like an itemized statement of your account, or if you would like to know your account balance, call 920.492.2905, Ext. 1006 or view your account online. Do not wait for the phone notification system to contact you, but rather, deposit monthly amounts into your family’s account. Account drops to $10 – a payment envelope will be sent home. Account drops to $0 – your children will be restricted to reimbursable meal choices only. Account balance drops to a negative $15 – the family account will be deactivated. K-8 students will be offered a sandwich and milk, at no expense. High school students will have to borrow from a friend or pay cash. MEAL ACCOUNT BALANCES ONLINE & E-MAIL NOTIFICATIONS OF BALANCE Go to: www.wordwareinc.com Enter Username and Password A statement of your account will appear. If you wish to participate but have not received your Family Key Number, call 920.492.2905 Ext. 1006. E~funds For Schools allows families several payment options. Meal payments can be automatically electronically withdrawn from your checking  account or charged to your credit card. You have the flexibility to pay at anytime through the school’s website. No payments will be allowed without your knowledge and authorization through this secure payment system.

The Cornell School District Launches Wordware’s New Nutrition Software LCS1000 Mayflower

The Cornell School District incorporated The Lunch Cashier System software by Wordware, Inc. for keeping track of the lunch program. The Cornell School District is excited to launch phase one of the new nutrition software.  The nutrition department has updated their systems to LCS1000 Mayflower by Wordware Inc.

 

LCS1000 Mayflower is a comprehensive, integrated food service management solution for K-12 School Districts. It provides all of the tools required to run a smooth and efficient food service operation. LCS1000 Mayflower is a suite of easy-to-use, highly-integrated software modules.

It may take a few weeks for everything to get up and running smoothly so we ask that students and parents are patient during this transition process. We are confident the new software will benefit the department and satisfy our customer needs and expectations.

What’s New?

The point of sale system has been implemented and features touch screen point of sale monitors that can display the students’ picture as the lunch card is scanned. This will allow for accurate identification of the customer.

The biggest change will be in how parents pay for lunches. Currently when parents deposit lunch money they then have to select where they want those credits to go between breakfast, lunch, or cash. At times this system has caused confusion for parents and they have accidently deposited money to the wrong option. With the new system, all money will be deposited into one account .

Wordware is continually developing their nutrition software to meet and exceed the needs and demands of our customers across multiple settings. Based on our customer needs and technology environments, we have created a fully web based program that will run on any HTML5 device and can be deployed as a fully cloud based solution or on an appliance. What does that mean to you? You can deploy our software any way you choose without a major investment in your infrastructure.

Wordware dedicated for providing best nutrition software to the schools for the health of students and to make worry free their parents.

When parents log into Lunch Cashier System they will deposit their student’s money into one account. This cash account will fund all lunch, breakfast or a la carte purchases. Parent username and passwords for Lunch Cashier System will not change.

Our Solutions
Family Based- Money deposited goes into a family account. This eliminates multiple entries and allows schools focus on the household.
Automated letter generation and reporting … built in timeline to streamline workflow … plus processing direct certification saves hours if not days of work. Particularly if there are multiple students in the same household (another benefit of a family based solution).
Wordware’s unique onscreen marking system keeps the student status anonymous to any onlooker while allowing the cafeteria staff to process the proper meal selection.
Because Wordware is web based and server based our networked LCS1000 keeps lines running fast regardless of internet speeds. Plus if the internet is down any data captured on the LCS1000 syncs to the cloud back up as soon as the connection is re-established. No data is lost.
Wordware provides robust reporting capabilities with on demand access to all the critical information staff and administration needs. Cash reporting … balances … student and family activity … meal detail etc. Just to name a few.

http://www.cornell.k12.wi.us/uploads/2011-12/Technology%20Plan%2012-15.doc