
State-by-State CEP Fact Sheets 2025
CEP is a win for students, families, and schools. Despite its undeniable benefits, some lawmakers want to weaken community eligibility during the 2025 budget reconciliation. Their proposal would force more than 24,000 schools nationwide, serving more than 12 million children, to drop CEP.
Now is the time to urge Congress to protect CEP, not weaken it. Use FRAC’s new state-by-state CEP fact sheets to explore the state- and school district-level impacts that proposed cuts to CEP would have.
The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) allows high-poverty schools and districts to provide breakfast and lunch at no charge to all students. Community eligibility reduces administrative paperwork; increases school meal participation; eliminates stigma; and makes it easier to implement innovative breakfast models. Community eligibility is a win for everyone — administrators, students, families, and school nutrition staff.
Quick Facts from FRAC’s Community Eligibility Report
Participation in community eligibility has grown each year as more schools learn about its many benefits. In the 2023-2024 school year:
- 47,766 schools in 7,717 school districts participated.
- 23.6 million children attended community eligibility schools.
- 85 percent of eligible schools adopted community eligibility.
Still, many eligible schools have not yet implemented community eligibility and should consider it for the coming school year.
For questions regarding Community Eligibility or FRAC’s Community Eligibility Database, please contact Erin Hysom at EHysom@frac.org.
- What is Community Eligibility, and how does it work?
- Benefits of Community Eligibility
- Making Community Eligibility a Reality for Your District
- Strategies for Handling the Loss of School Meals Applications / Implications for Eliminating School Meal Applications
- Community Eligibility Outreach Resources
- Medicaid Direct Certification Demonstration Project
Resources
FRAC’s Community Eligibility Grouping Tool and Financial Calculators
Grouping Tool– Group schools together to increase your ISP and maximize your claiming percentages.
- Break Even Calculator—Use your ISP and basic information about your school nutrition operations to calculate the participation needed (in breakfast, lunch, supper and/or snack) to break even.
- District Level Calculator- Dig deeper to look at expenses and revenue under community eligibility by school type and compare implementing community eligibility to your current operations.
- To find out which schools and districts participate and qualify for community eligibility in your area, see FRAC’s Community Eligibility Database.