Community Eligibility Provision Will Help Increase Participation in School Meals
PHILADELPHIA (April 30th, 2014) – High-poverty schools in southeastern Pennsylvania are now eligible to provide healthy school meals to all of their students free of charge, thanks to a powerful new tool known as the “community eligibility provision” (CEP). For the 2014-2015 school year, high-poverty schools can use (CEP) – which streamlines the process to ensure that low-income children have access to healthy meals at school. In southeastern Pennsylvania alone, 325 public schools now have the green light to use this federal provision to help improve student performance in the classroom.
In Pennsylvania, both Pottstown and Wilkes-Barre School districts have announced plans to use community eligibility to provide healthy meals to their students. PCCY and the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger urge all eligible schools to use CEP to improve access to school breakfast and lunch for low-income children. Eligible schools have until June 30th to decide whether they will use the provision.
“This is an exciting opportunity that schools in our state should seize,” said Donna Cooper, Executive Director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth (PCCY). “Adopting community eligibility can provide significant benefits not only to Pennsylvania’s high-poverty schools, but to the many students that they serve who might otherwise struggle to get enough food to eat each day.”
Community eligibility is available to schools where 40 percent or more of students qualify for free meals at school. In the initial rollout of CEP, 4,000 schools in 11 states used the provision. Early results show that community eligibility leads to more children participating in school meals, particularly boosting the number of children eating breakfast, an underutilized program that many schools are seeking to expand. In Pennsylvania, 726 public schools can opt to use CEP, according to data provided by the state Department of Education.
“We know that 1 in 6 households with children in Pennsylvania don’t have access to adequate food—community eligibility is an effective tool our state now has to change that statistic,” said Julie Zaebst, Policy Center Manager at the Coalition Against Hunger. “We have seen the success of community eligibility in reaching at-risk children in the states where it has already been implemented. It’s time for Pennsylvania to do the same to reach more children in need of nutritious meals, helping them to succeed in school and improve their health and long-term well-being.”
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