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Article: School Meal Programs: Improved Reviews, Federal Guidance, and Data Collection Needed to Address Counting and Claiming Errors.
- Article from:
- General Accounting Office Reports & Testimony
- Article date:
- October 1, 2009
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GAO-09-814 September 9, 2009
In fiscal year 2008, the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program provided meals to 30.9 million and 10.5 million children, respectively. Recently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued the first estimate of improper payments due to meal counting and claiming errors in these programs, which was approximately $860 million (8.6 percent of federal program reimbursements) in school year 2005-2006. These errors include: (1) cashier errors, such as those made in determining if a meal meets the federal menu planning and nutrition requirements (meal counting), and (2) aggregation errors made when officials count ...