Community Eligibility: The Key to Hunger-Free Schools 2025

Any school district, group of schools in a district, or school with 25 percent or more “identified students” – children who are certified eligible for free school meals without a school meals application – can choose to participate. Identified students are children who are eligible for free school meals due to participating in another means-tested federal programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or in most states, Medicaid, or because they are in a specific eligibility category, such as being in foster care, Head Start, or are experiencing homelessness.

Rather than collecting school meal applications, CEP schools are reimbursed based on the percentage of students that are automatically eligible for free school meals without an application, called the identified student percentage (ISP).

Identified students are a subset of those who would be eligible for free or reduced-price school meals if the school collected meal applications. For that reason, a multiplier of 1.6 is applied to the ISP to calculate the percentage of meals reimbursed at the federal free rate. The remainder of meals served are reimbursed at the lower, federal paid rate.

Directly certifying children as eligible for free school meals based on their participation in another means-tested program, such as SNAP or Medicaid, is the basis for CEP eligibility and federal reimbursement. While most students are directly certified for free school meals through household participation in SNAP, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Medicaid Direct Certification Demonstration Project has helped link eligible children to free or reduced-price school meals, and has supported schools’ ability to implement CEP. As of the 2024–2025 school year, 44 states use Medicaid and household income data to directly certify children for free or reduced-price school meals. This mechanism – Medicaid Direct Certification – is a catalyst for CEP adoption, increasing school’s ISPs and, in turn, the amount of federal reimbursement CEP schools receive.

This year’s growth in CEP adoption was driven by states initiating Medicaid Direct Certification in the 2023–2024 school year, as well as state policies which provide financial support to schools offering all students school meals at no charge. State-level Healthy School Meals for All policies and CEP subsidies bolster CEP adoption, particularly at lower eligibility levels where federal reimbursement is often inadequate to cover the cost of offering all students free school meals.