In 2023 and 2024, the Urban School Food Alliance (USFA) held brainstorming sessions and focus groups comprised of hundreds of SFAs, state agencies, and food industry representatives to identify, revise, and produce lists of common school food procurement challenges and training topics that could help build the capacity of SFAs to address these barriers. These findings put the gears in motion for USFA to explore whether a national sample of SFAs would have similar or different procurement challenges and training needs. To further understand these challenges, USFA sought research support from the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab, which issued a survey in January 2025, and Partners for Public Good, 3 which analyzed survey results and produced this report. This survey, targeted at school business officials and school nutrition directors, aimed to identify the top school food procurement challenges that SFAs face and better understand their procurement training needs. Researchers focused on training needs specifically because stakeholders named a lack of procurement training as a top challenge in USFA’s earlier research. In this context, training can communicate the most up-to-date rules and regulations; demystify the procurement process; and help Child Nutrition Program staff develop key professional skills. Through the survey, the study team sought to answer the following questions: • What are the top food procurement challenges that SFAs face? • How are procurement challenges impacting school nutrition program operations? • How do these challenges affect the sourcing and delivery of healthy, high-quality foods? • How are the challenges impacting the student population at-large? • What training do SFAs need to address procurement challenges? • What training methods do SFAs prefer? • Are there differences in procurement challenges or training needs across school district size, urbanicity, or respondent role?
This survey is one element of the investigative phase of the cooperative agreement between USFA and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), entitled Procurement Practices in School Meals: Making Real Change Work for Healthier Meals. The cooperative agreement focuses on redesigning the school food procurement process and promoting new school food business models. The survey findings will guide development of procurement training and instructional resources and serve as a foundation for improving processes and testing innovative approaches to address procurement challenges.
4 Procuring Good Food at School: From Contracts to Lunch Trays |
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