Promoting Educational Equity with the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP)

Overview

• Food insecurity occurs when a household lacks consistent and reliable access to the healthy food they need.
• People of color are more likely to be food insecure as a result of structural racism.
• Increasing access to food is an important step towards eliminating these disparities.
• The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) enables eligible schools to serve healthy school meals to all students, at no cost to them.
• CEP removes the application barrier to receiving free school meals.
• CEP reduces the stigma for participating in school meals program.
• CEP eliminates unpaid school meal debt.
• CEP supports families who struggle to make ends meet but have incomes above the cut-off for receiving free or reduced-price school meals.
• CEP gives kids access to the healthy food they need to grow, learn and thrive. When kids have the fuel they need, they have higher attendance rates, fewer disciplinary referrals, and improved test scores.

CEP removes the application barrier to receiving free school meals, eliminates unpaid meal debt... the list goes on! Learn more.