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The federal Community Eligibility Provision has helped more kids in southeast Ohio eat. Some worry it may face cuts
By: Theo Peck-Suzuki | Report for America
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB/Report for America) — Last year, a big change came to school lunches in Athens.
For the first time, the district met the threshold to qualify for the Community Eligibility Provision or CEP. That meant it could allow all students to get food from the lunch line free of charge. As a result, the number of students visiting the lunch line went up about 20%, according to treasurer Jared Bunting.
To enroll in CEP, a district must have a certain percentage of students who qualify for free meals. If the district meets that threshold, then CEP will help cover the cost of feeding everyone. Last year, the Biden administration lowered the threshold from 40% to 25% — in other words, if 25% of students qualify for free meals, the school can participate. That’s how Athens was able to qualify.
A leaked document from early February suggested Republicans in the House of Representatives may be considering a change to that threshold as part of the upcoming budget. The document proposed raising the CEP threshold from 25% to 60%. According to the document, this could save about $3 billion. (Under current law, the Trump administration could raise the threshold back to 40%, but no higher.)
A 60% threshold would also mean far fewer schools qualifying for CEP. Athens would not — neither would Alexander or Federal Hocking.
“It’s a really important program for our district to be able to feed all of our kids for free,” said Federal Hocking Treasurer Bruce Steenrod. “And if they take it to 60%, that’s gonna knock us out, ‘cause we’re around 50.”
Steenrod said CEP has been an effective tool for fighting stigma. Without it, he said, students on free meals may avoid the lunch line out of shame.
“When we’re on a schoolwide free program, nobody knows who is free and who is paid, because everybody gets it for free,” Steenrod said. “But if you’re targeting and you’re saying, ‘Okay, well this student gets it for free but this kid has to pay’ … a lot of kids won’t go through the line and get it because they don’t want kids to know they’re getting it for free.”
Bunting said CEP also addresses another problem: families that don’t return the paperwork to get free meals for their kids.
With CEP, those kids can eat for free anyway. Both Bunting and Steenrod also agreed that CEP can be helpful for kids who don’t quite qualify for free meals, but whose families could still benefit from saving money on food.
In Ohio, CEP also impacts districts’ overall finances. A district on CEP automatically gets a funding boost through Ohio’s Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid. For example, Bunting said Athens was previously getting $300,000 in DPIA funding. After qualifying for CEP, its DPIA funding went up to $1.6 million.
Any decision about the future of CEP will come from the Committee on Education and Workforce in the U.S. House of Representatives. House Republicans have set a goal to cut $330 billion from the federal budget through that committee.
WOUB asked to speak with a Republican committee member but instead spoke with a committee aide. The aide said there are no plans to touch CEP or any child nutrition programs; the committee believes it can find that $330 billion elsewhere.
The ranking member for Democrats on the committee, Rep. Robert Scott of Virginia, said he doesn’t buy it.
“They will deny cutting anything you ask,” Scott said. “Every time you name something, they say, ‘Oh, that’s not what we meant.’ And if you go through the entire list of possibilities, they didn’t mean anything.”
Scott criticized the idea of reducing free school meals to, in his words, “fund tax cuts for the wealthy.” He said he’d rather the government just ensure all students can eat for free.
“People have said, ‘Well, the wealthy would be getting a free lunch.’ OK, well, the wealthy are paying higher taxes. So what? The fact is that the school lunch is an important part of the school day. It is where many children get most of their nutrition,” Scott said.
House Democratic aides said they don’t see a clear path for Republicans to cut $330 billion in Education and Workforce without touching child nutrition in some way.