Farm to School Census (F2SC) - Respondents of State Child Nutrition Directors, compiling SFAs list

Attachment L Memo to State Child Nutrition Directors

United States
Department of
Agriculture
Food and
Nutrition
Service

3101 Park
Center Drive
Alexandria, VA
22302-1500

DATE:
MEMO CODE:

SP_

SUBJECT:

USDA’s Farm to School Census

TO:

Regional Directors
Special Nutrition Programs
All Regions
State Directors
Child Nutrition Programs
All States

We need your help in conducting the USDA Farm to School Census of all public school
district School Food Authorities (SFAs). The Census will provide an important national
baseline of how many SFAs are purchasing locally produced food for school meal
programs or conducting other farm to school activities such as bringing students to farms
and farmers into classrooms, teaching students how to cook locally grown food, and edible
school gardens.
The Farm to School Census is being conducted by USDA’s Farm to School Program, in
collaboration with Economic Research Service (ERS). This information collection is
authorized under 7 U.S.C. 427 and approved by the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB Control No. 0536-XXXX, exp. [insert date]). Participation is voluntary for both
you and the SFAs in your State. The time required for the State portion of this information
collection is estimated to average 2 hours.
We need State Agencies to:
1. Distribute the questionnaire to all public school district SFAs in your State and
encourage them to participate, and
2. Provide a list to ERS of all public school district SFAs in each state for tracking
response and sampling non-respondents.
Your assistance is vital. Information from the questionnaire will be used to allocate grant
funding and technical assistance for farm to school programs in your State and across the
country. These programs are connecting schools and farms to support local and regional
economies and inspire students’ enthusiasm for healthier food.
Please see the instructions below for distributing the questionnaire and providing a list of
public school district SFAs.

AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Regional Directors
State Directors
Page 2

Questionnaire Distribution
Please send the attached invitation to all public school district SFAs by email and
encourage them to participate even if they are not currently involved in any farm to
school related activities. Responses from all public SFAs are needed in order to develop
accurate state-level estimates of farm to school activities and to produce web-based maps
of SFA responses.
The questionnaire can be found at [include link here] and will be open until [give date
here]. It is estimated that the online questionnaire should take about 20 minutes if the
SFA has a local foods procurement program and only 5 minutes if it does not have one.
We will send you three reminder messages via the PartnerWeb and ask that you forward
these reminders to the SFAs in your State.
List of public school district School Food Authorities
Please send an electronic file (Excel, CVS, or TXT format accepted) of public school
district SFAs to Katherine Ralston at kralston@ers.usda.gov by [insert date, two weeks
after this memo], including the following information if available:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

Name of the SFA
State ID number
Food Service Director name
Email address
Mailing address
Phone number
Whether the SFA is managed by a private food service management company
Whether the SFA contains more than one school district
Names of other districts contained in the SFA

Please contact your Regional Office if you have any questions about this memorandum.
If you have questions about the questionnaire, please contact Katherine Ralston at
kralston@ers.usda.gov or 202-694-5463.

Sincerely,

Cynthia Long
Director
Child Nutrition Division