The National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs: Access, Participation, Eligibility, and Certification Study (APEC)

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP) play a critical role in America's strategy to ensure that children have access to nutritious meals. These programs, which provide free and reduced-price meals for students from low-income families, must balance competing objectives: (1) ensuring that children and families who receive benefits are eligible; (2) maintaining ease of access for those who are eligible; and (3) keeping the costs and burden of determining eligibility reasonable both for School Food Authorities (SFAs) and for families.

Mathematica's APEC study is estimating erroneous reimbursements created by certification errors, as well as meal counting and claiming errors to enable USDA to meet its federal reporting requirements under the Improper Payments Information Act of 2002. The study is also looking at the application and certification process to identify reasons that some families do not participate and difficulties they experience in applying.

The nationally representative sample includes 100 school districts nationwide, and about 3 to 5 schools per district. During the 2005-2006 school year, Mathematica will:

• Conduct a survey of SFA directors
• Collect data on meal counting and claiming activities from the SFA and study schools
• Select samples of meal program applicants and nonapplicants and conduct in-person interviews with the parent or guardian of these households
• Abstract data from sampled students' applications and other data

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, is funding the study. The final report is scheduled for summer 2007.

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