With Verification just around the corner, there's a number of things you and your staff can do in your Free & Reduced software to make this process even smoother this school year.  In working with our in-house Free & Reduced experts, we've come up with 5 things every district should do now to prepare for the start of Verification:

October is National Farm to School Month, which celebrates the connection schools and their communities have with fresh, healthy food grown by local producers.

Coming up with new, healthy recipes for school cafeterias can be challenging to say the least.  Fortunately, many states and organizations across the country have developed cookbooks full of nutritious recipes school kids will love.

Here are 13 of our favorite school cookbooks that feature plenty of locally sourced ingredients and flavors from around the globe:

Good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle begin at home. As a school administrator or school nutrition professional, you have a unique opportunity to share helpful tips with both students and their families.

A message from Terry Roberts, President of Heartland School Solutions. 

It’s hard to believe, but the 2016-2017 school year is already upon us! We hope you have enjoyed your summer and are as excited and eager as we are for the start of a new school year. Here at Heartland, we’ve been busy this summer training new staff, making enhancements to our software platforms, meeting with customers, and doing all that we can to ensure you and your district receive only the very best service and support from us.

Having up-to-date student information in your cafeteria point of sale (POS) system is vital to running a successful operation.  Serving reimbursable meals, end of the day reporting, and reconciling deposits all depend on the quality of your student information.  Understanding how to get this information out of your Student Information System (SIS) and into your POS system is an important first step.

The new school year is here! Get your menus ready with free easy-to-use templates that look as good as your meals do.  With fun designs for each month, these menus are sure to catch the eye of your students' parents.

The following post was written by Barry Sackin of Sackin & Associates. 

Child Nutrition Reauthorization continues its arduous trek through the legislative process with a new wrinkle.  The House Committee on Education and the Workforce marked up its version of CNR in late May.  There are a few things in the bill that you will probably find appealing: an increase of 2¢ in breakfast reimbursement; elimination of the Paid Meal Equity provision; no additional reductions in sodium beyond Target 1; periodic reviews of meal standards based on science; and a return to the five year review cycle.  But there are two killer provisions in the bill as well: raising the threshold for the Community Eligibility Program (CEP) from 40% to 60%; and a three state, three year pilot for block-granting school meals.

With the new school year just around the corner, now is the perfect time to make sure parents know about all that MySchoolBucks has to offer.  Order free materials today!

The following post was written by Barry Sackin of Sackin & Associates. 

In my last blog post, we talked about reauthorization and gave a first look at what’s in the Senate bill.  Today we will provide an update on CNR in Congress and look at some of the other school nutrition issues in the Senate bill.