A Unique Opportunity to Improve School Meals Applications

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PDF of this report (74pp.)

By improving school meals applications in the following ways, states and school districts can help families struggling against hunger get healthy meals for their children.

* Provide materials in a language and at a level parents can understand.
* Ask only for necessary information.
* Reduce opportunities for math errors.
* Encourage eligible families to apply.

This paper provides specific suggestions for revisions to school meals applications to help achieve these goals.


Overview

The school meals programs can play a critical role in supporting the healthy development of children and helping to ensure that low-income school-aged children have access to adequate nutrition. The process of enrolling for free or reduced-price meals and the application form itself are the gateway to these benefits. Typically school districts send home school meals applications and parents complete them at home without assistance. [1] In contrast to many other income-tested programs, there are no caseworkers dedicated to helping parents navigate the application process. Thus, it is particularly important that these applications be easy to use, provide clear directions, and avoid steps that might deter eligible families from applying.

As a result of changes in recent legislation reauthorizing the federal school meals programs, every school district in the country will have to revise its school meals application for the 2011-2012 school year.[2] While only three specific changes will be necessary, the fact that all applications will be revised and reprinted offers a unique opportunity to go beyond the required changes to improve the content and design of the application and related materials that are sent to households.

This paper is intended as a resource for states and school districts as they revise their materials for households related to the school meals programs.[3] It is not a comprehensive guide to developing these materials; rather, it highlights some best practices in school meals applications from around the country and points out areas where current materials often fall short. Fortunately, eligibility for the school meals programs is relatively straightforward, making a user-friendly application an achievable goal for states and school districts.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture makes available a prototype application and related materials to assist states and school districts as they design household materials.[4] USDA recently published prototype materials that reflect the changes in the reauthorization legislation and will soon provide translations of those materials.[5]

This paper includes four sections. The first section explains the new requirements that necessitate changes to household materials. The second section describes our review of applications and related materials. The third section highlights opportunities to improve program access by making changes to applications (and related materials) and summarizes the findings of our review of these materials. The fourth section undertakes a similar discussion of verification materials (the notice school districts send to a small sample of households that have to provide documentation to confirm their eligibility). Appendices A and B provide more information about the materials we reviewed. Appendices C and D summarize all of the legally required elements of application and verification materials, respectively, including requirements adopted as part of the reauthorization legislation. Appendix E includes a link to each state’s school meals program homepage and school meals forms (where available). Alternatively, readers can access state school meals program web sites by clicking on a state name in the list or map below. Appendix F includes links to the school meals web site for the 100 largest school districts.

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