Author: Kadin Mills

Putting together a school meal isn’t easy. “It is a puzzle essentially,” said Lori Nelson of the Chef Ann Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes scratch cooking in schools. “When you think about the guidelines, there’s so many different pieces that you have to meet. You have to meet calorie minimums and maximums for the day and for the week. You have to meet vegetable subgroup categories.” Districts that receive federal funding for school meals — through, for example, the National School Lunch Program — must follow rules set by the Department of Agriculture (USDA). And those rules may be changing…

Children sleep during nap time at Minnesota Child Care in Minneapolis on Dec. 30. Renee Jones Schneider/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Renee Jones Schneider/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday that it would rescind a series of Biden-era rules governing one of the largest federal funding sources for child care. The move comes less than a week after HHS confirmed it was freezing all federal funding through that same program. The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) sends money to states, tribes and territories…

The food pantry at Penn State Harrisburg saw an uptick in students during the fall semester. Aimee Wheeler, who oversees the pantry, says she expects this coming semester to be just as busy. “I expect to see even more in January and February, because students will be coming back from winter break and be stocking up,” Wheeler said. About a year ago, she said the food pantry might have had about nine visitors in a week. But lately, it’s been more like nine visitors in a single day. “We’ve seen more students than ever,” Wheeler said. And it’s not just…

This Thanksgiving, a new animated film offers teachers a resource to talk about contemporary Native Americans with their students. SCOTT DETROW, HOST: A lot of students in the U.S. just never learn that much about Native Americans in school. In recent years, some states have worked to include more Native perspectives and lessons. A new animated film is being offered as a resource for teachers, a way to talk about contemporary Natives with their students. NPR’s Kadin Mills reports.KADIN MILLS, BYLINE: The film starts out in an old-school pixel video game animation style. It follows Jake, an aloof boy whose…

If the government shutdown isn’t resolved by Nov. 1, some 65,000 low-income children will be at-risk of losing access to Head Start child care and early learning. JUANA SUMMERS, HOST: Low-income families across the country rely on Head Start for child care and preschool, but federal funding for the program is on hold during the government shutdown, and now some 65,000 children are at risk of losing their Head Start services. NPR’s Kadin Mills has the story.KADIN MILLS, BYLINE: In Florida, a cluster of Head Start programs serve the children of migrant and seasonal farm workers.DANIEL JAIME: I was a…

After nearly doubling during the pandemic, the rates of chronic absenteeism in K-12 schools are finally showing steady signs of improvement. A student is considered chronically absent when they miss at least 10% of a school year. In most states, that means missing about 18 days a year, regardless of whether the absences were excused. “Thousands of students have returned to schools, which means that states are putting in the work,” said Carl Felton, III, a policy analyst at EdTrust, a nonprofit that advocates for underrepresented students. Felton is the author of a new report that looks at how policies…