Audit 403326

42 U.S.C. § 1758 (b)(3)(D)(ii) and (iii) states, in part, each school year, a local educational agency shall verify eligibility of the children in a sample of household applications approved for the school year by the local educational agency, as determined by the Secretary in accordance with this subsection. Except as otherwise provided in this paragraph, the sample for a local educational agency for a school year shall equal the lesser of— (I) 3 percent of all applications approved by the local educational agency for the school year, as of October 1 of the school year, selected from error prone applications; or (II) 3,000 error prone applications approved by the local educational agency for the school year, as of October 1 of the school year. USDA Memo SP 13-2012 states in part, in general, LEAs must annually verify a sample of approved applications which is typically 3 percent of applications approved on the basis of income. For fiscal year 2025, the School District approved the eligibility status of free and reduced meal applications submitted manually or electronically by parents and guardians. Additionally, the School District directly certified students through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and Ohio Works First (OWF). Students directly certified as eligible for free meals were not to be subjected to the verification procedures/sample as no application is required for the applicable student. The School District completed verification procedures over two (3%) free and reduced meal applications. However, students from one of the applications that were verified were directly certified and should not have been subject to verification, resulting in a 50% failure rate for the program's verification requirements. Due to lack of response from the applicable parent/guardian, three students from this household were then incorrectly moved from free lunch status to paid lunch status for the remainder of the school year. This was caused by the School District's lack of understanding of the program's eligibility verification requirements. Failure to subject only applicable applications to the verification process could lead to the School District not verifying the proper number of applications and could also lead to an incorrect student meal status. The School District should develop and implement policies and procedures to ensure all directly certified students are removed from the eligibility verification pool and that the proper number of eligibility verifications are performed each year.