Dear Majority Leader Thune, Speaker Johnson, Leader Schumer, and Leader Jeffries,
The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), the bipartisan organization representing the legislatures of our nation's states, territories, and commonwealths, urges you to retain the current eligibility threshold for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) in federal school meal programs.
NCSL strongly supports CEP, which reduces the paperwork burden and red tape associated with the federal school lunch and breakfast programs by using existing administrative data to identify students who are categorically eligible for free meals. This process eliminates the administrative burden of processing individual free- and reduced-price meal applications for each student. A Congressionally-mandated study of early CEP implementation by USDA found that participation in CEP reduced the rate of errors in certifying students for free or reduced-price meals and had little or no impact on the rate of errors in claiming meal reimbursements at the appropriate rate. These results demonstrate that CEP's reduction in paperwork and administrative burden does not lead to a reduction in accurate implementation of school meal programs.
CEP also decreases the state and local costs of operating schoolwide meal programs at schools with high proportions of low-income students by providing a larger percentage of meal reimbursements at the free rate, reducing the amount of non-federal funding required to cover meals. NCSL appreciates the state flexibility that CEP provides as an opt-in benefit for schools and districts. Given the tight budgets that states and districts face, NCSL also appreciates that CEP does not include a matching requirement for states.
Tim Storey
Chief Executive Officer
National Conference of State Legislatures