Special Services District Receives Food Equipment Grant

TRENTON — The Cape May County Special Services School District is among 60 schools in 43 school districts in 14 counties around New Jersey will receive grants to purchase, renovate or replace equipment to enhance delivery of the National School Lunch Program in the state.
The state Department of Agriculture is administering the United States Department of Agriculture Fiscal Year 2010 Food Service Equipment Assistance Grant, which allocated $463,000 to be dispersed to districts for the improvements, according to a release.
“This federal funding will directly improve our schools’ capabilities to feed New Jersey school children nutritious, safe meals,” said New Jersey Agriculture Secretary Douglas H. Fisher. “The equipment that will be purchased will improve energy efficiency, enhance the quality of food service and increase participation in the meal programs.”
The grants are part of a one-time appropriation, similar to last year’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 Food Service Equipment Assistance Grants, designed to improve lunch program infrastructure. The funds must be used to purchase, renovate, or replace equipment that is nonexpendable, tangible personal property with a useful life of more than one year and a minimum per unit acquisition cost of $2,000.
To be selected as grant recipients, more than 50 percent of the students in the school had to be eligible for free or reduced-price meals and the school could not have received a grant in last year’s ARRA grant program. Eligible schools’ applications were then evaluated based on infrastructure need and impacting the greatest number of students.
This grant funding provides needed assistance for schools to upgrade their food service equipment infrastructure that in some cases had not been upgraded or replaced in 30 years. Equipment slated to be purchased with this year’s grants include refrigerators, freezers, hot holding cabinets, convection ovens, ranges, tilting skillets and walk-in refrigerators and/or freezers.
More than 673,000 students participate in the school lunch program in 2,694 schools in the state on a daily basis.