A USDA proposal would lower the threshold for Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program, a non-pricing meal option for school districts, which would allow schools, both in Cranston and across the country, to provide students with free meals.

“I think it’s important to start with the way school meals work traditionally, which is that some kids can receive free meals at school and the way that those kids were determined eligible was traditionally through an application,” said Administrator of USDA Food and Nutrition Service Cindy Long. “At the beginning of the year families fill them out and if their kid was eligible then great that family receives free meals, otherwise the family has to pay.”

What the CEP does, Long explained, is allow schools with a significant number of students who qualify for free lunches to do away with the application and provide all of their students with lunch at no charge. This program employs a formula to calculate how much money will be provided from federal sources to subsidize the cost of student food with the rest of the cost being made up by locally sourced funds.

“It gets kids away from applications and allows everybody to eat without charge,” Long said. “It has proven to be a really valuable tool for school districts. Not having to differentiate among kids reduces stigma, and it reduces the problem of unpaid meal debt. Which is what happens when a kid comes through the line needing lunch but doesn’t have the money to pay for it but also doesn’t receive aid.”

Long said that many schools have a policy that if a student doesn’t have money, even if they aren’t on the list of students who are eligible for free meals, the school will still make sure to give that student a meal. Debt, however, piles up over time. Long said that her understanding was that the Cranston School District, they’re currently looking at about $100,000 in unpaid meal debt for reasons like this.

“CEP helps deal with all of that,” said Long. “It really helps schools build kind of a really nice and consistent financial footing. They know how much funding they’re going to get. If it is not enough funding  from the federal government to cover all the cost they do have to come up with the remaining funding some other way whether that be local sources or state sources.”

Whether by grants, the state or city funds, finding the funding necessary to subsidize money provided for free lunches federally may still be financially beneficial in some cases. Long said that in addition to erasing future unpaid meal debt, participation in the CEP program can drastically lower administrative costs related to dealing with that debt as well as the removal of administrative need to handle applications from students applying to free meal programs.

It also helps students and families that choose not to apply despite needing the assistance due to stigma and discomfort over their financial situation. With the current state of the economy it is likely that more and more families will begin to find themselves in situations where help with the cost of school meals will be necessary, but many who need the help won’t apply for fear of being seen as less than other families.

“CEP has only been available to certain schools that have a certain percentage of kids that are eligible, and it’s been at 40% for the last 10 years,” Long said about why she believes more schools should have access to CEP. “What we’re doing now at USDA is proposing to drop that level down to 25%. What that would do is make this an option available to a wider number of schools and school districts. Cranston for example as I understand it is just below the current threshold. Right now, today, they wouldn’t have this option. If our proposed rule goes into effect they would.”

Long said that schools who currently use the CEP program often find their funding through district funding, which is part of the normal city or town budgeting process. However, she said that a trend the USDA has been seeing over the last year or so is an increase in state funding for universal free meal programs. Free meals for kids were something that was available across the country during the pandemic, Long said, and Congress ended it as a national program this school year.

Five states this year decided to step in and pay the additional money to keep the free meals for students going, according to Long, and she said that another five states have adopted the program for next year. Long said that in her understanding the Rhode Island legislature is considering doing something similar. If the USDA is successful in lowering the threshold necessary for the CEP program, and Rhode Island does pass similar legislation, Cranston schools could utilize CEP and state funding to provide all students with free meals without having to increase funding on a district, or city, level.

“It’s a much more seamless funding approach for the school,” Long said. “No applications. No figuring out who is eating on a given day. No worrying about who does have to pay and who doesn’t have to pay. No debt. It’s just a much more straight-forward approach that lets the school nutrition folks concentrate on what they should, like serving healthier meals.”