Child Nutrition Reauthorization
Priority

Improve the Area Eligibility Test

Click here to see how area eligibility specifically affects CACFP (pdf).

Click here to see how area eligibility affects afterschool and summer programs (pdf).

Congress should improve the area eligibility test so that more communities can operate afterschool, summer, and child care food programs.

• The 50 percent threshold keeps many afterschool and summer programs eligible for federal dollars for their basic costs from also receiving federal child nutrition dollars. In January 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act decreased from 50 percent to 40 percent the area eligibility test for a school to qualify as a Title I school, which allows it to use its Title I funds for school-wide education programs that can include afterschool and summer. The act also targeted the 21st Century Community Learning Center program, the largest federal funding source for the underlying costs of afterschool and summer programs (e.g. staff, rent, equipment), to programs serving students who primarily attend Title I schools, in effect making the 21st Century Community Learning Center afterschool and summer test also 40 percent. Since the child nutrition programs are intended to support these types of education programs, the threshold for the nutrition programs should be lowered to 40 percent so that it is consistent with other funding for afterschool and summer programs. Otherwise, important education dollars that should be used to provide better services and reach more at-risk children will be spent on food, or, if no food is provided during the educational and enrichment programs, children will be hungry and less able to benefit from the program.
• Under the current system, many child care home providers choose not to operate the program. Across the nation, over half of the family child care homes operate without CACFP support for healthy meals. When confronted with the complex CACFP eligibility requirements to be met outside of the areas currently eligible, most providers choose not to participate. It is easier just to resort to serving cheaper, less nutritious meals and operate without the CACFP standards, oversight, and required paperwork. It is not uncommon for providers to forgo offering even the less costly meals and simply let children rely on food sent from home, which is often less than nutritious.
• The 50 percent threshold keeps programs in many communities with very significant numbers of low-income children from qualifying, depriving millions of low-income children of the nutritious meals and snacks that they need. Fewer than 3 million children now participate in the Summer Nutrition Programs, one in six of the low-income children who receive free or reduced-price lunches during the school year. The afterschool nutrition programs have an even more limited reach, serving fewer than 2 million children (although, it is a newer program and participation has been growing). Family child care homes’ participation in CACFP, which had been one of the fastest growing nutrition programs, has dropped 27 percent since the introduction of a complex two-tiered reimbursement system (including the 50 percent test) in 1997. The majority of those who do participate do so through area eligibility.
• Fifty percent is the most restrictive the threshold has ever been. When Congress changed the area eligibility test in 1981 from one-third to one-half, there was an immediate and dramatic drop in participation. Participation went from 1.9 million children at over 20,500 sites to fewer than 1.4 million children at approximately 14,400 sites. Prior to 1996, there was no means test for CACFP.