2.  Our mission at the Department of Food and Nutrition is to serve nutritious and healthy meals to all Miami Dade County Public School students.  Maintaining and increasing reimbursable meal participation is a challenge we face every day. In the next slides there are ideas to assist each cafeteria manager in doing so.

3.  Set up an appointment with your Principal or administrator in charge of the cafeteria and discuss the school calendar as it relates to the cafeteria.  Early Release days – when is the lunch period scheduled in the day. If it is still at dismissal discuss changing it to a time between classes so that you can serve more students a healthy lunch and maintain your participation. Offer the option of the “Express Service”. The meal can consist of a hoagie type sandwich that will include three components and the students selects juice or milk. This will make it a fast service.

4.  Walk your Child to School – October 5 Discuss promoting the breakfast program with the students and parents, so that they may walk the children to school and join their child for a healthy breakfast. Discuss the breakfast item options Work with the Art teacher in creating a flyer to send home promoting the breakfast. Principal may assist in duplicating and sending home.

5.  Holidays: discuss with the administration that you can work with the Art teacher so the children can do some art work related to the Holiday and it can be displayed in the cafeteria.  You can have cookies or gelatin cups decorated according to the Holiday.  Cafeteria workers can dress up according to the Holiday.

6.  Work with PTA/PTSA to ensure fund raisers are within the district’s Healthy Beverage and Food Guidelines.  Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated between September 15 and October 16, work with Spanish or Social Studies teacher on a poster contest or foods native to Latin American countries.  February is Black History Month, work with Social Studies teacher on a specific project to display great historical figures.

7.  March is National Nutrition Month, work with the Science Department so that Nutrition could be taught this month and have students test different fruits and vegetables that will be presented in the classroom during lectures.  Be alert to e-mails from Staff Development for promotions throughout the year.

8.  Offer choices throughout the entire meal service. Have the choices at the beginning and at the end of the meal period.  When making salads and sandwiches, plan accordingly. For example if you prepare 10 salads and you run out, the next day prepare 12, if you still run out add a couple more until all customers that want salad can be served without you running out.

9.  Work with the school administration to encourage all students to go through the serving line even if they bring lunch from home, so they may complement their meal. For example, selecting juice, milk and fresh or canned fruit will complement their lunch and count as a reimbursable meal.

10.  Students must always use their meal identification number or keypad when purchasing items in the cafeteria.  Always offer combinations of items that will constitute a reimbursable meal at all POS stations.  Work with school administration to encourage students to meet in the dining room rather than other school locations to the start of the school day, in an effort to increase breakfast participation.

11.  Discuss with school administration contests to increase meal participation. Examples:  Poster contests between grades, the winners will have their posters displayed in the cafeteria.  If school attendance reaches 98% the Principal will assist behind the serving line for one lunch period.

12.  Be proactive  Be involved  Be creative

13.  Snacks served each day must be reported in the corresponding snack program that is operating in the school.  In the nutrition.dadeschools.net Food and Nutrition meetings tab you will find all memoranda pertaining to each after school care and its operation.

14.  Each after school care snack has two special program numbers to enter the snacks.  The main number will be to enter the reimbursable snacks served.  The secondary number will be to enter the snacks provided but not served to a child.

15.  It is very important that you enter the snacks every day in the POS system. If you need to make a correction you must do so immediately.  Food Service Accounting sends e-mails to my office with the schools that have not entered snacks for a particular day, have entered a number either too large or too small, etc.  If you do not enter the correct number of snacks this will affect your labor hours reported in the COGNOS program.  COGNOS is the report Food and Nutrition staff utilize to analyze if school is over the labor hours.

16.  If you have any questions, how to enter snacks, please contact your Region Coordinator or myself as soon as possible.  This also applies to all POS data. Corrections must be entered as soon as possible.

17. Snack ProgramReim # Non-Reim # Amigos for Kids50365014 FCAA50371704 FELC50425024 HEAT Snack50181516 Migrant50341622 Reimb/Community50255011 St. Thomas50435013 YMCA-2 (specific sites) 50355023 YWCA-----1703