10. Department of Agriculture · Notable
Issue a rule narrowing Community Eligibility Provision groupings
Printed page 303 10. Department of Agriculture
“Promulgate a rule properly interpreting CEP. The USDA should issue a rule that clarifies that only an individual school or a school district as a whole, not a subset of schools within a district, must meet the 40-percent criteria to be eligible for CEP. Education officials should be prohibited from grouping schools together.”
What has happened
- Not started
No CEP rulemaking exists or is planned. A Federal Register full-text search for the phrase "Community Eligibility Provision" across the whole window returns one document, a DHS public-charge rule that mentions it in passing, and nothing from FNS. USDA's complete 2026 Unified Agenda (read in full on reginfo.gov) carries fifteen FNS rulemakings and none concerns CEP, the 40-percent identified-student threshold, or the grouping of schools within a district. Cluster F (school meals and CEP) in `docs/research/ch-10.md`, round 3 ticket 09 batch 09c, records the queries.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- The two FNS school-meal actions that did issue go to eligibility verification paperwork, not to CEP grouping: FR 2025-10340 and its correction FR 2025-15099 eliminate the state ameliorative-action reporting requirement.
- #783 is the congressional twin (eliminate CEP) and is also not started.
- Action
- issue
- Object
- Community Eligibility Provision rule
- ID
- 782