Finding Text
FINDING 2023-1 - ELIGIBILITY Child Nutrition Cluster:
ALN 10.553, 10.555, 10.556,10.559 and 10.582
Pass-Through Agency: United States Department of Agriculture
Criteria: Income Eligibility Guidelines – Families who participate in the program are able to receive free or reduce meals if they qualify based on a number of factors such as number of household members and household income.
Condition: One family was found to be eligible for free meals, however, due to a data entry error the family was receiving reduced priced meals and not free meals.
Questioned Costs: None
Context: At the time of registration, this household applied for free or reduced meals. During the course of registration, RE-3J staff sent in an application which recorded the household as having four members. Based on this information, the family was eligible for reduced price meals. Later on, RE-3J updated its information on this family to record an additional family member who was not properly included with the household due to a manual entry error in the Student Information System. This additional family member, when added to the household, would qualify the family for free meals. The district did not send in a new application to reflect this change, leaving the family on reduced rather than free meals.
Effect: This household received reduced rather than free meals.
Cause: Manual data entry in the Student Information System allows for potential entry error. Once the error was fixed, a new application was not sent in to reflect this correction.
Recommendation: We recommend reviewing processes in place to ensure eligibility statuses are properly adjusted when changes are made to household sizes.
Management’s Response: Agree