Using School Attendance Area for SFSP/SSO Sites

This Management Bulletin (MB) provides a change that affects Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) and Seamless Summer Option sponsors that have or wish to establish Open or Closed-enrolled sites in low-income areas. The change requires sponsors to use the free and reduced-price meal data from the “attendance area” of the school where the site is located rather than the meal data from the “nearest school.”

Background

Title 7, Code of Federal Regulations, Section 225.2 defines area eligibility as follows:

Areas in which poor economic conditions exist means: (a) The local areas from which an open site and restricted open site draw their attendance in which at least 50 percent of the children are eligible for free or reduced-price school meals under the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program…

This allowed sponsors to use the school that was nearest to the site to establish Open and Closed-enrolled sites because the site drew their attendance from the area of where the nearest school was located.

Change

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 amends Section 13 of the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act by adding greater detail:

(i) In General - Subject to clause (ii), the term ‘area in which poor economic conditions exist’, as the term relates to an area in which a program food service site is located, means— (I) the attendance area of a school in which at least 50 percent of the enrolled children have been determined eligible for free or reduced price school meals under this Act and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 (42 United States Code 1771 et seq.)

This means the sponsor must now use the free and reduced-price meal data from the attendance area of the school where the site is located to establish area eligibility. If the sponsor is uncertain which school’s attendance area the site is within, they can contact the district for an attendance area map.

Where to Obtain School Meal Data

Sponsors may obtain school meal data by visiting the California Department of Education (CDE) DataQuest Web page at http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest. Sponsors may also obtain school data using the CDE student Poverty - FRPM Data Web page at http://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/sd/sd/filessp.asp. Be sure to use the most current data available. 

Sponsors should contact the school and request their meal data when they cannot find the information on the CDE’s Web site. The school data must be for the percentage of children that are eligible for free and reduced-price meals.

Action

Effective immediately, sponsors must re-evaluate the location of their sites and submit the correct school’s free and reduced-price meal data, if applicable. Sponsors that need to update their eligibility must enter the information in the Child Nutrition and Information Payment System.

If the school’s free and reduced-price meal data does not meet the 50 percent requirement, the sponsor may provide eligibility information from recent census tract or block group data, enrollment data, or migrant children status. Sponsors should consult with their Summer Meals Program Specialist about the possibility of using local zoning data, housing authority information, economic surveys, or other types of data to document site eligibility. The Nutrition Services Division recently disseminated MB USDA-CACFP-08-2012/USDA-SFSP-05-2012 that provided guidance for sponsors to obtain census data to establish area eligibility. You can view this MB on the CDE MB Web page at http://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/cc/mbusdacacfp08sfsp052012.asp [Note: the preceding link is no longer valid].

Questions

If you have any questions regarding this subject, please contact your agency’s SFSP Specialist. The SFSP Specialist Contact List is located in the CNIPS Download Forms section. You can also contact the Summer Meals Unit by phone at 800-952-5609, Option 7, or by e-mail at sfsp.ca.gov, to be directed to your SFSP Specialist.