UEI is for institutions.

No, individual researchers are encouraged to apply. Our review will focus on the scope of work you outline and ensure you have the necessary skills and time to complete the project. Many tasks, especially those involving secondary data, can be accomplished by smaller teams. It’s important to ensure strong alignment between the project narrative, budget, and the roles and skills of the project personnel.

A research organization for the purposes of this request for proposals could take a variety of forms, but a private for-profit company would NOT be eligible as the lead applicant. A state agency such as Department of Education would qualify as a lead applicant, and the LLC could be a partner/contractor on the project.

Eligible lead partners can include the following:

• public or private academic and research organizations
• not-for-profit organizations
• state or local government entities

The lead partner may not be for-profit, but for-profit entities can be included as a partner with an eligible lead partner. 

The award is for total costs, inclusive of both direct and indirect costs. The minimum award is $50,000 and the maximum is $250,000.

Yes, that is allowable.

While it’s not mandatory for projects to be national or multi-state, the USDA Food & Nutrition Service (FNS) will likely prioritize projects that provide more representative data across school food authority characteristics and regions. 

For instance, if you’re submitting a proposal for a large urban school district, consider including two school districts from different regions of the country. This approach would make your proposal more competitive from the FNS perspective, as funds are limited and the goal is to gather information on a national scale.

A single state with large variation in school food authorities and multi-agency partnership would be a compelling project scope, but if we received a similar proposal that had a multi-state/region scope, we would prioritize the one that covers the larger geographic variation.

Data is likely to be used as both evidence and to inform policy. Many details about this workforce are still unknown, so it’s important to share findings broadly with school food workers, advocates, unions, related organizations, federal agencies, and policymakers for their use.  

No, as long as the methods are appropriate for answering the proposed research questions.

There is no preference, but the data collection protocols should be thoroughly described and justified in the project narrative.

We recommend exploring the data sources used by researchers that we cite in Appendix B of the request for proposals (RFP). That said, this cooperative agreement and subgrants are being funded by USDA because we lack comprehensive national data on the K-12 school food workforce.

We recommend exploring available state-level data based on your geographic interest. State-level departments of education and agriculture do collect some data. These agencies operate federal meal programs and vary by state in the data they collect on the workforce and the relative accessibility of this data. 

Some labor unions also gather data on school food workers and may be willing to share this data. We also recommend contacting the School Nutrition Association national and relevant state-level chapters to inquire about data they may have available for analysis.

The “privatization trend” refers to school districts outsourcing all or part of their workforce to private management companies.

While many schools manage their food programs directly through the local school board (self-operated), about 20-25% of school nutrition programs today are outsourced to for-profit private food service management companies. 

The most well-known of these are multinational companies like Aramark, Sodexo, and Chartwells. There are also smaller, geographically specific private management companies, such as Red Rabbit, that manage school food programs. 

Essentially, privatization involves private companies taking over the management of school food workers.