15 schools will provide free lunch, breakfast

More than half of the schools in St. Mary Parish will receive free breakfast and lunch during the 2017-18 school year.
The St. Mary Parish School Board said in a press release Tuesday that the following 15 of the 21 schools in the parish will receive free breakfast and lunch as part of the Community Eligibility Provision:
—B. Edward Boudreaux Middle
—Berwick Elementary
—Centerville Elementary/High School
—Franklin High
—Franklin Junior High
—Hattie A. Watts Elementary
—Julie B. Maitland Elementary
—LaGrange Elementary
—M.E. Norman Elementary
—Morgan City Junior High
—Patterson Junior High
—Raintree Elementary
—W.P. Foster Elementary
—West St. Mary High
—Wyandotte Elementary
The Community Eligibility Provision is a federal program under the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Program in which schools and local educational agencies that serve predominately low-income children have a new option for meal certification.
Under CEP, schools do not collect meal applications for free or reduced lunch but instead use a process called direct certification in which other federal databases, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Temporary Assistance Pro-gram for Needy Families and Medicaid, are used to identify students who are eligible.
Schools are then reimbursed using a formula based on a percentage of students identified as eligible for free meals using the results of the direct certification.
Schools that are considered for CEP must have at least 40 percent of the student population as identified eligible students for free or reduced lunch.
The CEP started in the 2011-12 school year in just a few states and was made available nationwide the 2014-15 school year.