5/2009
Free and Reduced Price Notes
1. Reminders about the National School Lunch Program (or Special Milk Program):
Required information that must be provided to all households after July 1:
► Free and Reduced Price School Meals Application (or Milk)
► Parent Letter/Instructions for Meals (or Milk)
► Notification Letter (approval or denial of application)
Later -- To Households selected for verification (optional for Special Milk Program):
► Verification Selection – We Must Check Your Application
► Verification Results – We Have Checked Your Application
Optional information that may be provided to households:
► Sharing Information with Other Programs (other than textbooks and Hoosier Healthwise)
All the information may be printed two-sided. You will need to identify all the benefits that are offered
in your school, such as afterschool snacks. Please add specific school information such as names or
phone numbers where there are lines or [brackets] for this purpose. Be certain to select the
appropriate notification letter for those families approved with Direct Certification.
These are the changes in this year’s application and other documents.
1. The 21st Century Scholars no longer needs a signature at the bottom of the application, only a
statement of availability.
2. The application now has check boxes for the income frequency.
3. In all documents, for the Non-discrimination Statements, the ‘TDD’ has been changed to ‘TTY’.
4. In all documents, for the Privacy Act Statements, USDA has changed ‘Food Stamps’ to ‘Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program’ (SNAP). Indiana has not yet decided to change this.
If you make additional changes, you must submit your Free and Reduced application
package to us for approval. The Eligibility Guidance Manual was revised in 2008. You should
download this newest version to use as a reference on the entire Free and Reduced Price process from approving applications correctly all the way to verifying them in October as being accurate. It is
suggested that you insure everyone doing application approvals have a copy of the manual. The Manual
is available on our regular website on the School Nutrition page. For any questions, please contact
Diane Rice by email or phone toll free at 800-537-1142 or local at 232-0850.
2. Free and Reduce Price Notes…
The newest requirement is Direct Certification – as of summer 2008 it must be done by all NSLP
sponsors prior to distribution of Free and Reduced Price apps. This does not include RCCI sponsors
who have no day students and Special Milk only sponsors.
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For all those on NSLP, even if your school only had five families that were on F&R this past year, you
need to do this process first – no earlier than July, but prior to distribution of F&R apps because any
students found via direct certification should instead get a letter from you stating they do NOT need to
fill out a F&R app as they have already been ‘certified’ as eligible. We have a sample notification letter
with the other F&R forms.
Doing this in July:
1. Gives time to remove graduates from fall enrollment.
2. Gives time to inform prior to providing the F&R apps so these people do not get both.
3. Allows for the most current info for the whole school year.
It is an online process and can be fairly simple. The result is a printable sheet that lists any students
from your school enrollment that match exactly to the state welfare food stamp approvals list. Your
printed list of matched students is then your documentation for them to have free meals and textbooks.
The family does NOT have to fill out an app and you do not have to process their app. In larger
districts, as many as half of the food stamp children will be found thus greatly reducing the F&R approval
workload. For specifics on how to do, see the manuals on the SNP page of our regular website:
www.doe.in.gov/food/schoolnutrition/welcome.html The “Quick Start” method manual will be easier
for the smaller schools. For more assistance on the procedure, call John Todd at this office.
The rest of the 2004 Reauthorization changes for Free and Reduced should already be in place. See
Policy 98 for a complete list of them. Here are some of them:
1. Schools are required to provide household applications.
2. When there is more than one income frequency on an application, it is preferred that
determinations be made by annualizing each income as opposed to making them all monthly as in
the past.
3. Sponsors need to ensure that Food Stamp or TANF numbers are valid case numbers. See Policy 92.
4. USDA requires direct certification for all schools. See our regular website for instructions or ask
for John Todd.
5. Approved applications are good for the entire school year and for the beginning of the next. See
Policy 74. There are only three situations when an app would not be annual: temporary,
verification, and parental request.
6. Migrant, homeless, and runaway youth are categorically eligible for free meals. The categorical
eligibility would be documented by the school’s migrant coordinator or homeless liaison with a list
of the students in each of these categories as opposed to completing an application. See Policy 75.
7. Migrants are categorical on an annual basis. Homeless and runaways are temporary in that
IF your school’s homeless liaison lets you know that the status has changed, then you
would change their status also for food service.
8. Privatized military housing allowance is excluded from income eligibility determinations.
Verification notes……
1. Don’t wait – do it as early as you can, start in September if you want. The reason to “verify” is to
get people off of benefits they do not qualify for in the first place. The longer you wait, the longer
these people receive them.
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2. Verification “for cause” may be done whenever you have questionable application information. Full
details are on p. 67 of the Eligibility Guidance Manual. Applications verified due to cause are NOT
part of the sample selected each fall and are not part of the Verification Summary Report, either.
3. The verification process must be completed by November 15. The summary report as to what
happened is due to us via email by December 15. If we haven’t received it by January,
reimbursement will be delayed until it is here.
4. Complete verification procedures are in the 2008 Eligibility Guidance Manual starting on page 62 and
also in the much shorter Verification How To which is found online under Verification.
5. School districts must verify 3% (rounded up to next whole number) but no more, of all approved
applications on file October 1. The Standard method requires selection first from the errorprone applications (those within $100 monthly or $1200 annual income) – see Policy 79. If there
are not enough error-prone applications to get the 3%, schools must randomly select additional
applications to fulfill the percentage requirement.
6. OR for an alternate method, IF the school district has a non-response rate in the previous year of
less than 20%, they may select Random 3% OR Focused 1% error-prone and ½ % categorically
eligible applications. At the bottom lower right of your verification report, there will be a
percentage IF you were over 20%. That means you do not have a choice and must use the Standard
method.
7. It is important to be aware that qualifying for an alternate method for next year is dependent on a
low non-response rate achieved in the current year.
8. Applications selected for verification should first be reviewed for accuracy by someone other
than the person who did the initial approval – this is a ‘confirmation review’. Applications selected
for verification that are also correctly approved should then be verified. Those that are incorrect
should have their status changed and the household notified. This requirement is waived IF the
school has free and reduced software that ensures greater accuracy in determinations. See Policy
96 & 113 .
9. Households must be allowed to provide documentation of income for any point in time between
the month prior to application and the time the household is required to provide income
documentation. See Policy 76.
10. Schools are only required to make at least one additional attempt to contact non-responsive
households. After that, it is suggested that you inform the family as to the date their benefits will
stop (give 10 days notice). If they were just lax in providing valid info, they will now take care of it.
If they never really qualified in the first place, they will be off of benefits and that’s OK.
11. Direct Verification (as opposed to Direct Certification) is available only until December 15. This
process allows applications first selected for verification to be checked in an easy online ‘lookup’ –
even some reduced ones might be verified. You do not need to verify all apps on file – only those
‘for cause’ and the 3% selected for verification. The complete explanation document is available on
the School Nutrition page under Verification.
IF an app can’t be verified with Direct Verification, NO negative action should be taken. You must
then give the family the option of verifying (proving) what’s on their app the traditional way.
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