by Chris Bernard, President/CEO
One out of every five kids in Oklahoma doesn’t always have enough food to eat.
No child should have to sit in class hungry and unable to focus. It hurts their ability to learn, disrupts the class for the teacher, and results in worse outcomes for our educational system. But it happens in classrooms for thousands of students in our state every day because their families don’t have the resources and their schools don’t leverage all the tools available to them to make sure kids have access to the food they need.
The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) is a federal program that helps schools in high poverty areas serve meals to all students at no cost to their families. It helps eliminate paperwork burden on families, reduce stigma around free lunch, support families that may not be on free lunch but are still struggling to meet all their needs, and it can help schools increase the quality of their meals by raising revenue and leveraging economies of scale.
But implementing this program is easier in some schools than in others. School leaders must carefully balance multiple factors to figure out if CEP is right for their school. To participate in CEP, schools must look at how many students already get help from programs like SNAP (food stamps), TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), or FDPIR (Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations) and meet a minimum threshold. The rate of students participating in those programs determines the amount the federal government will reimburse the district for each meal served. As highlighted in a report just published by Hunger Free Oklahoma, Oklahoma has found a smart way to help. In 2023, the state started using a new federal option to count students who get help from Medicaid (SoonerCare) in addition to the previously listed programs. The impact was tremendous! Before this change, only 382 schools were using CEP; after the change, the number jumped to 849 schools, more than double! Now, almost 300,000 students in Oklahoma get free meals at school thanks to CEP.
Even more schools could be implementing this program: 786 schools are eligible to implement CEP as of 2025 but are not taking advantage of the program.
CEP is a crucial program that makes our food safety net effective. It helps schools, kids, teachers, and families. Oklahoma’s success shows how well it can work, especially when using the Medicaid option to reach more students who need help. But there’s more to do.
Leaders in Oklahoma and across the country should keep supporting CEP and the programs that help schools operate CEP, so every child can have the food they need to learn and succeed. School leadership can leverage the CEP program to feed more kids in their schools and districts, getting better meals and better educational outcomes. Government leaders should find ways to make it easier for schools to utilize and scale the program across the state, so all children in need can access no-cost meals.
If you want to learn more about CEP in your area, view our newly released report here: hfok.org/CEP24-25. You can also email Bailey Ashbaker, Hunger Free Oklahoma’s Senior Policy Analyst and Engagement Specialist, or sign up for the newsletter here: HungerFreeOK.org/join-newsletter.