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Community eligibility is a federal option that enables high-needs schools to offer school breakfast and lunch at no charge to all students. To qualify, schools must meet a certain threshold of poverty as measured by their identified student percentage (ISP).
The Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) obtained information on schools that have adopted community eligibility during the 2025‐2026 school year from state agencies that administer the federal child nutrition programs. Under federal law, states are required to publish, by May 1 of each year, a list of CEP-eligible and near-eligible schools and districts. CEP-eligible schools and school districts are ones with ISPs of at least 25 percent, and near-eligible schools and school districts are those with ISPs between 15 percent and just under 25 percent.
FRAC compared these state-published eligibility lists to the participation lists gathered from state agencies and compiled a comprehensive list of eligible and participating schools and districts for the 2025‐2026 school year. The database currently includes data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each entry, when available, contains the following information for a given school: state, school district, school name, ISP, student enrollment, and current participation status.
Visit FRAC's Community Eligibility webpage for more information about this provision.
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State | School District (Local Educational Agency or LEA) | School | Identified Student Percentage (ISP) | Participation in CEP | Student Enrollment (Where Available) |
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The Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) obtained information on schools that have adopted community eligibility during the 2025–2026 school year from state agencies that administer the federal school nutrition programs. Under federal law, states are required to publish, by May 1 of each year, a list of CEP-eligible and near-eligible schools and districts. CEP-eligible schools and school districts are ones with Identified Student Percentages (ISPs) of at least 25 percent, and near-eligible schools and school districts are those with ISPs between 15 percent and just under 25 percent.
To examine CEP participation against eligibility, FRAC compared states' May 2025 eligibility lists to the participation files provided by the state agency upon request. In determining district eligibility, FRAC treated a district as eligible if it contained at least one eligible school or at least one already participating school. FRAC treated a school as eligible if it appeared on a state's published eligibility list above the 25 percent threshold, or if it appeared on the participation list below 25 percent ISP. Schools that were missing from a state's eligibility list, but appeared on its participation list, were treated as eligible.
FRAC gave states the option to report both eligible and adopting schools in the CEP participation data collection. This gave states the opportunity to update their eligible schools list to reflect any school closures or consolidations. Twenty-five states – Alaska, Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming – and the District of Columbia provided both eligible and adopting schools for this analysis.
The 2025–2026 CEP participation data reflects the point in time when the data was received from the state agency and may differ slightly from other participation data sources.
Any district, group of schools in a district, or school with an ISP equal to or greater than 25 percent is eligible to participate in CEP. Identified students include children directly certified for free school meals through data-matching because their households receive assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), or the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR). As of the 2025–2026 school year, 44 states also participate in the Medicaid Direct Certification Demonstration Project, which allows schools in those states to directly certify children for free or reduced-price school meals based on their participation in Medicaid and if their household income falls within applicable eligibility levels for free or reduced-price school meals. Identified students are also children who are certified for free meals without an application because they are unhoused, migrant, runaway youth, enrolled in Head Start, or in foster care.
The schools are color-coded by ISP according to the following legend:
| ISP 25%–39% |
| ISP 40%–49% |
| ISP 50%–59% |
| ISP 60% and higher |
| ISP Unavailable |
The database includes data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The participation data requested from state agencies included whether schools elected to adopt community eligibility, the ISP the schools use to determine the federal reimbursement for meals served, and the total number of students attending each adopting school. The ISP schools use to determine the federal reimbursement for meals served, sometimes called the group or claiming ISP, is reported for participating schools, while the individual or proxy ISP is reported for non-participating schools. Two states — Nebraska and Tennessee — provided individual schools' ISP for CEP-participating schools. Therefore, these states may have schools indicated in ISP categories that do not accurately reflect the ISP used to determine federal reimbursements.
The following states had CEP-participating schools that did not provide ISP data:
Illinois did not include individual school ISP data in their May eligibility file; therefore, individual ISP data is unavailable for Illinois' CEP-eligible but not participating schools. There are also some instances where ISP data is withheld to protect personally identifiable information. Additionally, some states reported schools' free-claiming percentages (ISP multiplied by 1.6) rather than the ISP. The reverse calculation (free-claiming percentage divided by 1.6) was completed to determine the appropriate ISP category for these schools. While the exact grouped ISP is unknown in this scenario, it can be determined that the school is participating in CEP with an ISP of at least 62.5 percent.
There are instances where states may not have enrollment data for CEP-participating schools. In some instances, states may withhold enrollment data to protect personally identifiable information. Additionally, some CEP-participating schools may be specialty schools where children are enrolled and counted for in another location. In these instances, enrollment data may not be available. Enrollment data is missing for CEP-participating schools in the following states:
Enrollment data is missing for CEP-participating schools in the following states:
Enrollment data is missing for CEP-participating schools in the following states:
In this instance, FRAC used the median value for each suppressed range:
In some instances, states reported multiple schools as one participating site. In Mississippi, 17 records represented multiple sites. Those records were split into their individual school sites. Enrollment from the eligibility sheet was reported, and ISP from the participation sheet was reported. Nebraska reported six records at the district level rather than as individual school sites. For these districts, school-level records were added to reflect the reported schools.
In Michigan, some CEP sites are sponsored by districts other than the school's home district. For interpretability, the final dataset reports the home district's information, regardless of which district sponsors the site. Additionally, some schools include multiple CEP sites within the same building, sometimes served by different districts. To avoid inflating the total number of schools in the analysis, these sites were combined into a single school entry.
The 2025-2026 CEP data reflects the point in time when the data was received from the state agency and may differ slightly from other participation data sources.
Last Updated: July 22, 2026