Cafeteria
Community Eligibility Provision
Facts
- The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) is a new alternate meal counting and collection procedure provision that was available to all schools nationwide beginning in 2014-15 school year. Big Pine Unified School District became eligible to participate in the 2018-19 school year.
- The CEP reduces application burdens to one every four years.
- Schools on the CEP will never collect meal eligibility applications, complete the verification process, or categorize the meals as free, reduced-price, or paid when serving the meals.
- Breakfast and lunch must be served at no cost to all students in schools that are on the CEP.
- The Big Pine Unified School District has established a Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) base year for funding purposes. Schools using this option to establish a new LCFF base year only must collect income data for all eligible students at least once evert four years.
Benefits
- All students receive two healthy meals at no charge to the student. Students that have access to better nutrition tend to perform better academically, have better health, and maintain better school attendance.
- Paperwork for schools and families is dramatically reduced. Schools participating in the CEP no longer have to collect and certify applications or complete the annual verification process.
- Meal lines move more quickly, because meal counting and claiming is simplified., Staff will not have to categorize each meal served as free, reduced-price, or paid.