Technical Notes

Community Eligibility Data Collection

2022–2023 School Year

Methodology

The Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) obtained information on schools that have adopted community eligibility during the 2022–2023 school year from state agencies that administer the federal school nutrition programs. Under federal law, states are required to publish, by May 1 of each year, a list of schools and districts with identified student percentages (ISPs) of at least 40 percent and those with ISPs between 30 and 40 percent (i.e., near-eligible schools and districts). For this school year, the deadline to report eligible and near-eligible schools was June 30th, 2022.

These lists were reviewed, with missing or inconsistent data identified. In these situations, FRAC gave states the opportunity to provide or address the inconsistent data. The state notes below provide an explanation of remaining data issues that are displayed in the database. FRAC compared the state-published lists to the lists from state agencies, and then compiled an exhaustive list of eligible and participating schools and districts for the 2022–2023 school year. This year, FRAC gave states the option to provide a list with the eligible and participating schools and used that list for the database if it was provided.

General Notes

This database includes data for all schools that are currently participating or were approved to participate in community eligibility, as well as schools that are eligible or near-eligible to participate during the 2022–2023 school year. The 2022–2023 school year is the first school year since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that schools returned to normal school nutrition operations, and is thus the first school year since the 2019–2020 school year that all schools listed as participating in community eligibility actively participated.

Any district, group of schools in a district, or school with 40 percent or more identified students can choose to participate. Identified students include children directly certified for free school meals through data-matching because their households receive assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), or the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR). Some states participate in the Medicaid direct certification demonstration, which allows them to directly certify for free school meals children who are enrolled in Medicaid and belong to a family who meet an income test. Identified students are also children who are certified for free meals without an application because they are homeless, migrant, enrolled in Head Start, or in foster care.

The schools are color-coded by ISP according to the following legend:

State Notes

The database includes data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

States were given the option to provide a list of schools eligible but not participating in CEP in addition to the list of schools participating in CEP. The following states chose this option: Alabama, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming.

Some states did not provide student enrollment information for certain schools: 62 schools in Alabama, 11 schools in Arizona, one school in Nevada, one school in New Mexico, 29 schools in New York, 40 schools in South Carolina.

Some states reported schools' free claiming percentages (ISP multiplied by 1.6) as 100 percent, so it is impossible to know the exact grouped ISP. It can be determined that the school is participating in community eligibility with an ISP of 62.5 percent or above. In these cases, 62.5 percent was used in the database: 35 schools in the District of Columbia, 297 schools in Ohio.

One state did not provide claiming ISP information for certain participating schools: 3 schools in Indiana.