Collecting Free and Reduced-Price Data for School Year 2024-2025

For the 2024-2025 school year, in most school districts, families will need to complete an application through their school to determine if their household is eligible for free or reduced-price school meals, as was done last year. Things to know:

  • The ESEA (Title 1) Income Eligibility Forms (alternate income application) cannot be used to certify a student as free or reduced-price eligible in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Additionally, the NSLP 510 non-profit food service account may not be utilized to cover the cost of distributing or processing ESEA Income Eligibility Forms.
  • For Summer 2025, USDA will not allow the use of PY25 ESEA Title 1 Income Eligibility Forms data to identify and automatically issue eligible students the 2025 Summer EBT (SUN Bucks) one-time $120 food assistance benefit. Instead, eligibility status and source of eligibility for all enrolled students in both the NSLP and SBP must be reported to the Food Service Program Association in AzEDS.
  • Determinations made from school meal Household Applications for Free and Reduced-Price Meals and Direct Certification just be used for AzEDS reporting.
  • For sites/districts participating in a Special Provision Option on an approved cycle, the ESEA (Title I) Income Eligibility Forms may be used to collect free and reduced data for AzEDS reporting only during non-base years or an active CEP cycle and the cost of processing the ESEA (Title I) Income Eligibility Forms must be paid for with funds outside of the non-profit food service account.
  • The Arizona legislature appropriated one-time funding to reduce or eliminate copayments that would otherwise be charged to children eligible for reduced-price meals during the 2024-2025 school year. Under traditional operations of the NSLP and SBP, families with students who qualify for reduced-price meal benefits may incur a fee of up to $0.40 for each lunch and up to $0.30 for each breakfast. The state appropriation will be provided to the NSLP and SBP operators by ADE as a per-meal reimbursement. If the appropriated amount is insufficient to cover all meals served to students certified as eligible for reduced-price meal benefits, ADE will reduce the funding proportionately and notify the impacted SFAs. See HNS 06-2024.