Connecting Children to School Meals

It’s now easier to get all children in a SNAP/Food Stamp, TANF or FDPIR household certified for free meals. Under a new policy on Extending Categorical Eligibility to Additional Children in a Household (pdf), if any child in the household is an individual recipient of food stamps/SNAP, TANF cash assistance, or FDPIR benefits, all children in the household (as defined for the school meals programs) should be certified for free meals.

USDA issued letters to alert recently unemployed people to free and reduced price meal benefits. The first letter (pdf) is directed to State Workforce Agency Administrators, and asks that they further distribute and/or post the second letter (pdf), to make unemployment insurance applicants aware that their children may be eligible for free school meals. Also, CareerOneStop, an employment website sponsored by the Department of Labor, posted the letter to their site

You can help get more eligible children enrolled for school meals:

Urge your State unemployment agency to post the information in their local offices, provide letters directly to unemployment insurance applicants, and to add information to their websites.

Urge State nutrition agencies to alert districts that they now have a responsibility to certify all children in the household for free meals if they have knowledge that at least one child is an individual recipient of food stamps, TANF cash assistance, or FDPIR benefits.

Press for more frequent direct certification data matching; the new policy provides yet another reason why frequent data matches are so important.

Improve the direct certification matching process so that once a single child is matched, all children in the household that are known to the food stamp agency are put on the direct certification list.

Revise the notice that is sent to parents alerting them that a child has been directly certified to encourage them to contact the school district if there are additional children in the household.

See FRAC’s Strategies in Tough Economic Times: Improving School Meal Access and Expanding Participation (pdf) for more information about connecting eligible children to free school meals.

Does Your Back-to-School List Have School Meals Applications on it?
With the beginning of the new school year, millions of children will need access to nutritious school meals and snacks after school. Make sure that collecting school meal applications should be a top priority for the community, as should ensuring access to breakfast and afterschool snacks and suppers.

Many schools are working diligently to enroll eligible children for free and reduced-price meals. But, as many families continue to feel the effects of the recession, it is likely that many more children may be eligible for the school meal programs than last year.

Advocates can help schools expand outreach efforts, offer tips on how schools can capture newly eligible children, and provide information about increasing school breakfast participation and operating the afterschool snack and supper programs.

Download these FRAC materials:

A Guide to Collecting School Meal Applications (pdf)
lays out important strategies for increasing the number of eligible children accessing school meals and helping schools to leverage additional funding.

School Meals Outreach Brochure (pdf)
explains to parents how to seek free or reduced-price school meals for their children. A Spanish version (pdf) is also available.

FRAC's Breakfast Outreach Resource Center and
Afterschool Resource Center
provide best practices, outreach materials, tools and strategies to get more healthy meals and snacks to children.

Afterschool Nutrition Standards of Excellence (pdf)
can help you evaluate and create "healthy" afterschool programs.

Improving access to these important programs is one of FRAC's top priorities for Child Nutrition Reauthorization. Follow this link for more information and to sign up for action alerts.

For questions and technical assistance, contact:
School Meals: Madeleine Levin at mlevin@frac.org
Afterschool Programs: Katherine Moos at kmoos@frac.org