Additional information

The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) is a USDA FNS-funded State administered program that provides free meals and snacks to children in low-income areas when school is not in session. At the local level, SFSP is
administered by State-approved sponsoring organizations. These organizations
manage one or more sites that are located in a variety of settings, including
schools, parks, community centers, libraries, farmers' markets, apartment
complexes, churches, and migrant centers. Traditional summer sites provide
meals to children for consumption on site. Many of these sites offer enrichment
opportunities for children, such as reading, physical activity, or nutrition
education. Other sites, located in approved rural areas, can serve meals for
multiple days for pick-up or delivery for offsite consumption.
FNS issues program funds to State agencies, which then pass the funds to SFSP
sponsoring organizations to run the program. Sponsoring organizations use
that money to cover both the food and administrative costs of the program.
Federal payments require a simple "meals times rate" computation. SFSP
sponsoring organizations submit meal counts to their State agencies once per
month. Those meal counts are multiplied by one of two SFSP rates. Meals
prepared on-site or meals served by sites located in rural areas receive a higher
reimbursement rate from FNS, whereas meals prepared by vendors and served
at sites in non-rural areas receive a lower rate. Both the self-prep/rural and
vended/urban rates are designed to cover food and administrative costs.
FNS is currently engaged in efforts to develop an improper payment estimate
for SFSP in accordance with a Sampling and Estimation Methodology Plan
(S&EMP) as required by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). FNS first
developed a S&EMP in Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 and is committed to building upon
these efforts. Data collection is ongoing for the SFSP improper payment study,
which is described in the S&EMP and estimates meal counting error in the
SFSP. USDA began data collection for the SFSP improper payments study in
summer 2023. The agency's previous sampling and estimation plan proposed
to continue data collection annually through 2028. However, the agency did not
collect data in the summer of 2025. USDA will resume data collection in the
future contingent on agency resources and priorities.
In addition, FNS is in the early stages of an update and expansion to the Child
and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) Family Day Care Home (FDCH) Tiering
Determination study, which will also measure area eligibility in SFSP, which is
the primary determinant of program eligibility. The study will also address
improper payments in the program's rural non-congregate option, a new
feature of the program available since 2023 and only allowed in areas
designated as rural, by examining errors in rural determinations for noncongregate
site locations. FNS plans to analyze data on program operations
from 2025.
Despite these ongoing data collections and studies, FNS does not yet have error
measures for meal counting error or certification error in SFSP, which are the
two types of error that could cause improper payments in the program and that
we are working to estimate. Following consultation with USDA's Office of the
Inspector General (OIG) and the OMB, for FY 2025 reporting purposes FNS will
not report an error rate for FY 2024, consistent with the approach it has taken
since SFSP's S&EMP was originally developed in 2019. At present, the agency
believes the available data are insufficient to produce an adequate and reliable
estimate.
During FY 2025, FNS and SFSP State administering agencies undertook the
following activities to ensure integrity in the program:
1) Guidance and Supporting Materials on the Interim Final Rule "Establishing
the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) Program and Rural Non-
Congregate Option in the Summer Meal Programs" - To support the adoption of
non-congregate meal service flexibilities and promote program integrity, FNS
continues to release updated Question and Answer guidance, webinars, and
other supporting materials following the implementation of the rule. In early FY
2025, FNS published a set of fact sheets that directly address integrity controls
to combat potential program error or fraud in non-congregate meal service.
2) Progress on Improper Payment Studies - FNS is working to establish improper
payment rates for SFSP in accordance with the Payment Integrity Information
Act (PIIA) in an improper payment study. During the summer of 2024, FNS staff
continued their data collection efforts for the study and went to approximately
70 SFSP sites in 7 states. In these unannounced site visits, FNS staff observe
meal service to compare their meal counts with those recorded by the site staff
and reported to the sponsor. Throughout FY 2025, FNS has been working toward
collecting records from states in order to estimate an error rate from site
observation data.
3) Summer Summit - No Kid Hungry hosted the Summer Nutrition Summit in
December 2024. The Summit brought together participants from States,
territories, tribal agencies, and sponsors. The event provided an opportunity to
engage in collaborative discussions and spark innovative ideas, with a focus on
successful implementation of non-congregate summer meals and Summer
EBT.
4) FNS-418 Update to Include Non-Congregate - A revision to the FNS-418 form,
used to report data on meals served in the SFSP is available to states for the first
time in the summer of 2025. The form was updated to capture the number of
non-congregate meals, attendance, and operating days. This promotes
accurate reporting and differentiation between congregate and non-congregate
meals.
5) Non-competitive Technology Innovation Grants (nTIGs) - In FY 2025, FNS
released $28M in nTIG funds for child nutrition State agencies to improve
information technology (IT) systems. FNS works with grant recipients who are
using nTIG funds to develop, improve, and maintain child nutrition IT systems.
FNS expects that the overall improvement of IT systems by nTIG recipients
administering SFSP will improve the State agency's ability to train, monitor,
provide technical assistance, and complete corrective actions.
6) Site Finder Update to Improve Functionality - The Summer Meals for Kids Site
Finder helps families find nearby summer meal sites. In 2024, the Site Finder
map was updated to include information on whether the site was Eat On-Site or
Meals To-Go to reflect non-congregate changes to the program. In early 2025,
FNS introduced a new reporting form for states to standardize the
identification of non-congregate sites. This update improves the quality of data
on the site finder map while simplifying the reporting process for states. FNS
introduced the new form to coincide with a new regulatory requirement that
states submit their first file of summer sites by June 30 and update those files
at least twice during the summer. This will improve the utility of the map for
families of eligible children.