Community Eligibility

2014-2015 CEP Participation

  • 13,819 schools
  • 2,218 school districts
  • 6.4 million children are enrolled in CEP schools

Community Eligibility Provision Elections by State for School Year 2014-15 (pdf)

Follow this link to USDA’s state lists of eligible schools and districts:

Community Eligibility Provision Status of School Districts and Schools by State

Resources

Educate your state and school district about community eligibility.

Report: Community Eligibility: Making High-Poverty Schools Hunger Free

Community eligibility is the newest opportunity for schools with high percentages of low-income children to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students. It increases participation by children in the school meal programs, reduces labor costs for schools, and increases federal revenues. In short, it allows for a healthier student body and a healthier school meal budget.

Included in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, community eligibility completely eliminates paper applications. Instead, schools are reimbursed through a formula based on the number of “identified students” – those certified without application for free school meals because they are in foster care or Head Start, are homeless, migrant or living in households that receive SNAP/Food Stamps, TANF cash assistance or the Food Distribution on Indian Reservation benefits. Community eligibility has been available in Illinois, Kentucky and Michigan since the start of the 2011-2012 school year. Washington D.C., New York, Ohio and West Virginia began offering the option to school districts in the 2012-2013 school year. Georgia, Florida, Maryland and Massachusetts have been added for the 2013-2014 school year.  Beginning in the 2014-2015 school year, all schools nationwide that meet the 40 percent identified student threshold will be eligible to participate in this option.

USDA has a Community Eligibility Provision web page that includes the proposed regulations (pdf) for community eligibility  and other helpful guidance.

Advocates and school districts can work together to get the word out about this new option. Here are some steps to take to help implement community eligibility.

1. Make sure school districts know about community eligibility.

Since this is a new provision, local school officials may not have heard of community eligibility and will have some questions. They will want to know whether their schools are eligible for community eligibility, how they would be reimbursed for school meals, how it would affect the operations of the school food program and other programs that rely on data from school meal applications, and what their obligations would be to students and state administrators.  School districts are likely to be especially interested in how operating under community eligibility will affect their share of Title I education funding.

2. Make the decision about implementing community eligibility.

School districts considering adopting community eligibility will want to calculate its impact on their federal reimbursements and food service revenue.  They will have to decide which schools will participate. For reimbursements, school districts will have to decide whether to use individual school building direct certification percentages or whether they will be clustered and reimbursed based on the group’s direct certification percentage.

3.  Inform the press and parents.

Schools implementing community eligibility have an opportunity to publicize it using traditional media and social media.  They will also need to inform parents that their children will receive free breakfasts and lunches and that they do not need to complete a school meal application.  Districts that choose to collect household income information using an alternative form will need to establish new practices for distributing and processing those forms unrelated to school meal program administration.