National School Lunch Program (NSLP)
Calculation Data for Schools and Libraries

Calculating E-rate Discounts

An E-rate discount can range from 20% to 90% and is determined by whether your school or library is located in an urban or rural area and the economic need of your students. The level of economic need is determined by the percentage of students eligible for the National School Lunch Program.

E-rate Discount Matrix Always Calculated by Building

Information Needed to Calculate Discounts Using Discount Matrix

National School Lunch Program Data

To calculate a school’s E-rate discount, each school first must determine the percentage of its students by school that are eligible for the NSLP, which is basically 185% of the federal poverty guidelines. Whether a student participates in NSLP or if the school serves lunches is irrelevant. The basic issue at hand is whether or not a student’s family falls within the income eligibility guidelines of NSLP.

For the school year, 2002-2003, the income eligibility guidelines are as follows:

Schools may use participation and not eligibility, but it likely will provide that school with a lower discount than they deserve, and thus less E-rate funding.

NSLP Participation
If you use participation data, you have two choices of data sets.

1) The data that was reported to the Department of Education LAST year, or

2) The data that was or will be reported to MDE around October of THIS year.

PIA staff is aware that NSLP data is posted on the state web site and will look there for their first verification of discounts. However, because NSLP eligibility is the rule, and not participation, they will call an applicant for second party verification if eligibility is used and not participation.

NSLP Eligibility
If you would like to determine eligibility, you have several options, all basically designed to figure out which students’ families are within 185% of federal poverty guidelines. The following programs have eligibility guidelines that meet or exceed NSLP guidelines, and therefore if a family is eligible for one of them, they can be counted towards NSLP eligibility.

• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) – only if family income is at or below the income guidelines for NSLP
  
• Need-based tuition assistance programs that rely on income guidelines that meet or exceed NSLP
  
• Medicaid
• Food Stamps
• Supplementary Security Income (SSI)
• Federal Public Housing Assistance (Section 8) – a federal housing assistance program administered by HUD
• Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)

If you don’t know the income or low-income program participation of the families in your school, you have two methods to gather this data.

1) School personnel can individually identify students that are not NSLP participants, but are eligible, via a sibling match. For example, if a student in the high school does not participate in NSLP, but their younger sibling does, the older student can be counted towards NSLP eligibility as well.

2) School personnel can conduct a survey of that school’s families. This method is ideal for a non-public school or a school that does not participate in NSLP. A sample survey cover letter and survey are attached.

· The survey must be sent to all families whose children attend the school.

· They must attain a return rate of 50% in order to project a poverty rate for all students in the school, based on surveys returned.

· The survey must collect the following information:

• Address of family
• Grade level of each child in family
• Family size
• Income range of parents and/or participation in need-based programs
• Specific income not required and probably should not be collected

· The school should take every precaution to assure confidentiality of the family – names of families are not required.

If you have conducted a survey in the past, those results may be used for 2 years since the survey was done.

Unacceptable Methods of Eligibility Determination

• Feeder Schools Method
• Non-Random Samples
• Title 1 Eligibility
• Principal’s Estimate