Latest News for School Nutrition Programs

Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) Data Report in TX-UNPS

Published: 270 days ago
" Each year between March 1 and March 20, CEs must report eligibility and enrollment information that is reflective of the students at each school as of April 1. This includes CEs that are not planning to operate CEP in the upcoming year. This information (1) is preliminary data that helps CEs and TDA to identify schools that are potentially eligible to operate CEP and (2) will automatically populate the ISP fields in the CEP application screen in TX-UNPS.
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Each year between March 1 and March 20, CEs must report eligibility and enrollment information that is reflective of the students at each school as of April 1. This includes CEs that are not planning to operate CEP in the upcoming year. This information (1) is preliminary data that helps CEs and TDA to identify schools that are potentially eligible to operate CEP and (2) will automatically populate the ISP fields in the CEP application screen in TX-UNPS. For this report, reflective of April 1 means information about student eligibility or enrollment that exists before April 1 of the reporting year.

For the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) Site List screen in the TX-UNPS Application Packet, CEs must report the following information between March 1 and March 20:
•    Number of current students certified as categorically eligible without household application—Identified Students—for each school the CE operates under NSLP or SBP in based on two eligibility types:
1. Directly Certified SNAP students
2. Directly Certified students for the following programs: 
- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
- Food Distribution Program for Indian Reservations (FDPIR)
- Medicaid Free, starting October of 2017 if identification is made through TX-UNPS
- Head Start and Early Head Start pre-kindergarten programs
- Foster
- Homeless, including runaways and individuals displaced by declared disasters
- Migrant
• Total current student enrollment for each school the CE operates under NSLP or SBP 

When the CE records the identified eligible students for each eligibility type and total student enrollment information, TX-UNPS automatically calculates the ISP for each school—alerting the CE about schools that are potentially eligible for CEP. While the ISP for a group of schools is based on total eligible students and total student enrollment for a group of schools, these percentages can assist program administrators in identifying advantageous school groupings.

CEP Reporting resources are available here. Note: USDA published The Final Rule, Child Nutrition Programs - Community Eligibility Provision—Increasing Options for Schools, which lowers the Identified Student Percentage (ISP) threshold to participate in CEP from 40% to 25%. This option will go into effect for SY 2024-2025, based on ISP data from April 1, 2024. 

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