Additional Massachusetts Schools or School Districts Potentially Eligible for "Community Eligibility" or Universal Free Meals for Their Low-Income Students: Deadline is June 30th

Did you know that there are 880 elementary and secondary schools in Massachusetts - of nearly 2,000 schools - that have high percentages of low income students and could be providing free breakfast and lunches to ALL students in the school or throughout the school district?

Community Eligibility (CEP) is a new federal option to allow high poverty schools to offer breakfast and lunch to all students at no charge while also eliminating the administrative burden of meal applications and the stigma for students who qualify for free meals but other kids don't. School districts have until June 30 to notify their state agencies that they would like to "opt in" to CEP for the 2014-15 school year. We're coordinating efforts with Project Bread and our national partners at the Food Research Action Center (FRAC) in the hopes of encouraging more MA school districts to pursue CEP by notifying the state Department of Early and Secondary Education (DESE) they want to participate. Here's information from FRAC on the CEP option.

School districts need to notify DESE by June 30th.  

A number of school districts have already sent in their letters to DESE. The list below are school districts that may not have done so yet - but the numbers of kids getting free and reduced price meal data and other information suggests they may have enough low income students to opt into the CEP option. School Districts can participate in CEP district-wide, or identify specific schools with a higher number of low income students within a school district. If you live or work in these communities, think about raising this with your local school administrations and local anti-hunger organizations. There may be valid reasons why the school district is not applying this year - but they may also just need to hear from you about how important this is and that they still have time!

For a complete list of the potentially eligible CEP schools in Massachusetts, go to the following link on the DESE website:http://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=10196 Click on the Excel and PDF documents to see the school specific data (the documents were recently updated from the 4/30/14 lists with additional schools).

If you can help with outreach to these School Districts before June 30th, let us know !