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Congress has an important opportunity in 2020 to improve the health of millions of our nation’s children by passing a strong reauthorization that protects and strengthens the child nutrition programs. These successful, cost-effective federal nutrition programs play a critical role in helping children in low=income families achieve access to child care, education, and enrichment activities while improving overall nutrition, health, development, and academic achievement.

The School Hunger Elimination Act of 2019 (S. 2752), introduced by Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), would make a number of improvements to the School Nutrition Programs, including increasing the number of low-income children who are directly certified to receive free school meals and bolstering community eligibility.

Most school districts can take additional steps to increase the number of students they certify to receive free school meals without submitting a school meal application. This improves the financial viability of implementing community eligibility, reduces administrative work for the district, and ensures that the most vulnerable students are able to receive free school breakfast and lunch.

The Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) urges Congress to enact legislation that supports and strengthens program access and participation by underserved children and communities; ensures nutrition quality; and simplifies program administration and operation. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of the federal child nutrition programs, and a number of policy improvements that were made during COVID-19 should be implemented permanently by Congress. Legislation should also maintain and build upon the critical gains made in the last child nutrition reauthorization. In order to achieve these goals, FRAC asks Congress to make the following improvements to the child nutrition programs.

From the 2017–2018 school year to the 2018–2019 school year, participation in the Community Eligibility Provision grew by 14 percent. Over 13.6 million children in 28,614 schools and 4,698 school districts are participating and have access to breakfast and lunch at no charge each school day through community eligibility. This report provides an analysis of community eligibility implementation – nationally and for each state and the District of Columbia.

When considering adopting community eligibility, schools often question how its implementation might affect the allocation of certain federal funds, specifically Title I funding. This concern arises because under community eligibility, schools no longer process school meal applications, and the percentage of students certified for free and reduced-priced school meals are commonly used to distribute Title I funds to schools. Fortunately, there are other allowable measures that school districts with community eligibility can use to allocate Title I funds. This resource provides answers to frequently asked questions regarding the relationship between community eligibility and the allocation of Title I funds.

Community eligibility has become a popular option among eligible schools due to the many benefits it brings to the school nutrition program and the entire school community. In the 2016–2017 school year, more
than 20,000 high-needs schools with an enrollment of nearly 10 million students had adopted community eligibility.

At the end of the community eligibility four-year cycle, school districts must reestablish their identified student percentage (ISP) to continue operating community eligibility. Those that no longer meet the 40 percent-eligibility threshold, but have an ISP of at least 30 percent, can continue to operate community eligibility for an additional year, called the “grace year.”

Find a selection of FRAC conference call recordings on the Conference Call and Webinar Recordings page.

The House Budget is proposing to significantly cut the number of schools eligible to participate in the Community Eligibility Provision, a federal option for high-poverty schools to offer free school meals to all students. Under the proposal, over 8,000 high-poverty schools, enrolling 3.8 million children currently participating in community eligibility, would be impacted — roughly 40 percent of the 20,000 schools currently participating.

Because school districts using CEP no longer collect meal applications at all schools, states have developed alternative data sources for assessing the poverty level of schools. The main approaches are described in this chart.

An infographic explaining how the Community Eligibility Provision allows high-poverty schools to serve free meals to students through eliminating applications.

This guide, co-authored by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Food Research & Action Center, highlights key steps that advocates and community members can take to support school districts’ adoption of the Community Eligibility Provision. These steps are divided into three categories: informing school districts, analysis and policy work, and how to engage relevant stakeholders.