The purpose of this memorandum is to provide state agencies operating the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children with information regarding compliance with split tender transactions.
This report responds to the requirement of PL 110-246 to assess the effectiveness of state and local efforts to directly certify children for free school meals. Direct certification is a process conducted by the states and by local educational agencies to certify eligible children for free meals without the need for household applications.
The proposed action would implement four sections of the Agricultural Act of 2014, (2014 Farm Bill), affecting eligibility, benefits, and program administration requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Statistical models were designed to estimate national improper payments due to certification error on an annual basis using district-level data. This enables FNS to update its estimates of national improper payment rates for the NSLP and SBP in future years without having to conduct full rounds of primary data collection.
FNS is proposing changes to SNAP issuance regulations in accordance with the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 PL 110-234.
The attached policy memorandum, “Modifications to Accommodate Disabilities in the School Meal Programs,” includes important updates to requirements related to accommodating children with disabilities participating in the school meal programs. Previous FNS guidance on this issue was included in FNS Instruction 783-2, Rev. 2, Meal Substitutions for Medical or other Special Dietary Reasons
The second Access, Participation, Eligibility and Certification Study (APEC II) included a follow-on report that provided statistically-derived state-level estimates of school meals erroneous payments. However, while APEC II provided a rough indicator of relative risk for groups of states (e.g., higher than average, about average, lower than average), it was not a state-representative direct measure, and creating actual annual measures of such erroneous payments at the state level using APEC methodology is cost-prohibitive. This report explores alternative approaches to developing measurement-based state-specific estimates that are responsive to year-to-year changes in the actual underlying rate in each state. It also provides cost and burden estimates for the implementation of each of these methods.
The final version of the FNS-366B that all states must use to report quarterly SNAP data.
This is the 11th in a series of annual reports that examines the administrative accuracy of eligibility determinations and benefit issuance for free or reduced-price meals in the National School Lunch Program.
National completion rates for SNAP QC reviews have generally declined since peak levels in the 1980s, and State-level completion rates vary widely. This study examines the factors contributing to incomplete reviews of cases and describes best practices associated with high SNAP QC completion rates.