Principals and FARM Coordinators,

With two weeks remaining until the FARM count deadline for state compensatory education funding and Title I, we need you to do everything you can to obtain as high a FARM application return rate as possible, ensuring our students, your school and our district receive the resources and funding we deserve. Here is our suggested plan for how you should tackle your last push to maximize your FARM count:

  1. Go to the FARM Due Diligence Tracker: (You will need to use a networked school computer).
  2. Print out your school’s FARM list.
  3. Indicate on the sheet those students for which you submitted applications. If possible, pull the paper copies you made of them. If you sent these to Food and Nutrition more than one week ago, we suggest one of two courses of action:
  4. Call the parent and get consent to enter the paper copy of the application online.
  5. Call the Office of Food and Nutrition (410-396-8763/8764) and schedule a time to stop by with those paper copies, so that you and a Food and Nutrition staff member can review and investigate those applications.
  6. If you need additional FARM applications, please email or submit your request through:
  7. Perform outreach on the students for which you have no record of an application. Note the column that identifies whether the student is “likely eligible,” and make a concerted effort to reach out to their family and mention the importance of filling out an application.
  8. Make sure to catalogue any of your efforts in the outreach boxes in the Due Diligence Tracker (and leave the not-interested button where it is, at “no”). Also indicate whether students/households claimed they were not interested; in this case, please click the “yes” button for not-interested.
  9. Ensure that students with temporary 45-day “free” statuses (because they completed an application stating zero-income) do not lose their lunch status and maintain an active free status on Oct. 31 and beyond. The list of temporary 45-day “free” status students was sent last week. An updated list will be sent in a few days. We suggest either of these two courses of action:
  10. If the household income has not changed, please have the parent or yourself (once you’ve verified with the parent) call Harriet Maynor at Food and Nutrition 410-396-8763/8763 to extend the student’s FARM status another 45 days.
  11. If the household income has changed, they should submit an application so that they can maintain a lunch status for the entire school year.
  12. Ensure that all students who have been identified as homeless on SMS (via transportation request, school uniform fee waiver, etc.) are receiving free meals for the entire year. The list of these students is sent every Tuesday. The list of students is sent every Tuesday with the Free Meals for Homeless Students request form attached.
  13. Ensure that all students selected for income verification respond and send documents to the Office of Food and Nutrition by Nov. 1 so that they do not lose their meal eligibility status for the rest of the school year. The list of these students is attached in the FARM Due Diligence Tracker, toward the bottom of the page. In addition, FARM coordinators received this list in a recent e-mail.
  14. Principals are being provided with a global connect script they can use when contacting these households.
  15. Schools are being provided with the home language feed from SMS so they can flag households with language barriers and provide additional support.
  16. Schools are being given a flier that shows them how to access a telephonic interpreter, if necessary.