Across the nation, and within Massachusetts, more schools are offering universal free meals - breakfast and lunch - to low income students.
Between SY2014/15 and SY2015/16 (this school year), the number of school districts that are eligible for the "community eligibility provision" (universal free school lunch and breakfast to ALL children in the school district) more than doubled! The Massachusetts CEP rate increased from 15% (22 districts out of 144) to 35% (48 out of 136 districts). (Table 1 of chart in report below). This is great news, but we STILL have a ways to go!!
Below is a detailed report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities along with links to a searchable data base and an interactive map with fantastic information on the school districts in MA that would likely qualify for CEP but are not participating.
If you work in a community that has not elected the community eligibility option and want to work on this, let us know!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Becca Segal, CBPP <schoolnutrition@cbpp.org>
Date: Thursday, April 7, 2016
Subject: 18,000 Schools Become Hunger-Free
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Community Eligibility Updates
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18,000 Schools Become Hunger-Free
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In the 2015-2106 school year, more than 18,000 high poverty schools in nearly 3,000 districts adopted community eligibility, allowing them to offer breakfast and lunch at charge to all students, as explained in the report we released today with the Food Research & Action Center, Community Eligibility Adoption Rises for 2015-2016 School Year, Increasing Access to School Meals.
Community eligibility reduces paperwork and relieves administrative burdens for schools so they can operate more efficient school meal programs and focus more time and resources on providing healthy meals to all students to support student health and academic success.
These schools represent just over half of the eligible schools and serve more than 8.5 million students who now have access to two healthy meals a day at school. Take-up grew substantially in the second year of nationwide availability, increasing by 4,000 schools compared to the 2014-2015 school year.
Additional resources are on our community eligibility web page:
- The full report, which includes state-by-state data
- A searchable database of eligible and participating schools
- Interactive maps that show how take-up in each state compares to other states and the nation
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