LINQ

When we ask a district CFO what keeps them up at night, we usually hear a version of the same answer: audit season, year-end close, and the constant pressure to produce accurate, presentation-ready financial reports for a board that needs to understand wh

Food trucks for schools help you feed kids where they want to be around campus. That's especially true early and late in the school year when indoor cafeteria spaces sit empty. Throughout the rest of the year, rolling food service can turn an ordinary lun

The data a school nutrition department handles, especially around eligibility, factors into funding formulas that finance departments and federal programs leaders care about deeply. That makes a close partnership between district finance and nutrition a r

Most of a district's budget arrives with strings attached. Whether it's Title I, IDEA, grants, or general fund allocations,each dollar comes with its own rulebook about how and where it can be spent. Use the wrong one and you're looking at audits, clawbac

There's a new school meal rule coming, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately, because when I talk to nutrition directors about new standards I hear: we are committed to bringing kids healthy meals, but need better ways to actually do it. Nutrition

If you've ever tried to run a school district budget through a tool built for a retail company or a startup, you already know the problem. General-purpose budgeting software wasn't designed for fund accounting, and that gap shows up everywhere: in your re

Direct certification sounds like a simple way to help maximize school funding in theory: a file comes in, students get matched, and the process is done. Funds districts are entitled to flow in. In practice, matching is where vital funding can quietly slip

The reimbursement check isn't the only lever a nutrition program has. Meeting students where they are around campus, offering snacks they want when they want them, and keeping tabs on eligibility matching can help you boost your average daily participatio

With school payments coming in through so many channels (athletics, school store, clubs, field trips, etc.), many schools still haven't made the switch to using one app for school payments. They're still juggling a variety of apps and spending valuable ti

Brett Foster, MBA, SNS, Executive Director of School Nutrition at Knox County Schools, joined us to host a session at ANC 2026 about running a school nutrition department like a business. Here's the story behind how her team harnesses every dollar to feed