Is your school district serving free lunches to all eligible students?


On Board Online • March 2, 2015

By Courtney Sanik
Policy Consultant

Have your school policies kept up with changes in ways that your district's children can become eligible to receive free or reduce-price meals in school?

There are three ways this can occur:

  • The traditional way involves parents or guardians filling out a form in which they disclose their income.
  • A method called direct certification involves the State Education Department giving districts lists of children deemed qualified, without further application by households, to receive free or reduce-price meals households because of their families' participation in certain programs such as federal food assistance or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Medicaid benefits can trigger eligibility for those students from homes where the income is at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level for the family size.
  • All children in an entire school or an entire school district can receive free meals in what's known as community eligibility. The federal Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 allows low income/high need districts that meet certain provisions to elect to provide all students with free, nutritious breakfast and lunches, which New York State opted into during the 2012-13 school year.

NYSSBA recently updated its sample policy number 8520, Free and Reduced Price Meal Services to reflect different options that school boards may choose.

For instance, a school board can authorize direct certification to participate in the district's food programs to foster children. Migrant, runaway, homeless and Head Start children also can be "categorically" eligible for free meals (i.e. eligible by virtue of being designated in those status categories). If the board chooses to allow direct certification in such cases, the district's policy should be changed to reflect it if it hasn't already done so.

For community eligibility, at least 40 percent of the students in a school, group of schools, or district are individually eligible for free food services. The federal government makes an adjustment reflecting the percentage of students who ordinarily would be ineligible for free or reduce-price lunch, then reimburses districts.

While there can be added expenses for the district, benefits may outweigh costs. Advantages include reduced administrative time for paperwork, reduced staff time spent recouping payment from students, and reduced stigma among students receiving benefits.

According to Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), 101 districts serving a total of more than 300,000 children in New York State obtained community eligibility as of Sept. 1, 2014.

As a district's demographics sometimes change, it may be worth investigating periodically if your district would benefit from this option. The deadline to elect to do this for the 2015-16 school year is June 30, 2015.

More information can be found at http://www.fns.usda.gov/school-meals/community-eligibility-provision.




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