Finding Text
Federal Agency: U.S. Department of Education
Passthrough Entity: Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Assistance Listing Number and Federal Program: Child Nutrition Cluster - 10.553 School Breakfast Program, 10.555 National School Lunch Program, 10.559 Summer Food Service Program for Children
Compliance Requirements: E. Eligibility
Criteria:
In accordance with 7 CFR 210.7(c)(1)(i) the District is required to correctly determine eligibility for free and reduced price lunches and afterschool snacks based on the requirements under 7 CFR 245. Under 7 CFR 245.6(c)(4), if the student is not automatically eligible under direct certification or another exception, the District must use income information provided by the household of the student to calculate the student's eligibility for free or reduced prices. The District makes applications available to households so that their income can be reported to the District for such purposes. Per 7 CFR 245.6(d), if income information is available to the District from other sources, the District is able to determine that a child whom no application was submitted would meet the eligibility. If no income information is submitted by the student’s family or otherwise available, then the student would be charged full price for meals.Condition:
During the course of our audit, we noted that the District had a student classified as eligible for free lunch, however no application was on file to document the household’s income. The student was also not eligible per direct certification.
Cause:
This household included a foster child, who is directly eligible for free lunch. However, the District’s software for tracking free and reduced lunch automatically applied free lunch to the other children in the household as well, even though the required application was not obtained.
Effect:
With improper eligibility status on students for free or reduced lunches, the District could over report their meal counts by allowing ineligible students to receive reduced or free lunch and breakfast. This could result in the District receiving more in their monthly Claims for Reimbursement than qualified. It could also cause the District to under report their meal counts if eligible students are omitted from the free and reduced meal counts. In addition, the amount charged to students who are classified as full or reduced price may be over or understated if they are classified incorrectly.
Questioned Costs:
No questioned costs.
Perspective Information:
This appears to be an isolated event as it was noted on only one student in our sample and only occurred due to rare circumstances.
Identification of Repeat Findings:
Not a repeat finding.
Recommendation:
We recommend that the District implement a review of the free/reduced applications to ensure that each student’s free or reduced meal status is correctly determined. Also, we recommend that the District review the free/reduced list to ensure that all students are either directly certified through another program or that the appropriate income information has been submitted to determine eligibility.
Views of Responsible Officials:
The District has implemented an online free/reduced application program which should correct this issue. Management will also make sure that all employees associated with the applications, as well as the District’s foster care liaison, are aware that automatic qualification only applies to the foster children and does not carry over to the household children, as is the process with homeless students. See Corrective Action Plan.