ESPARTO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICTLocal Government

Federal Program: National School Lunch Program Federal Agency: U.S. Department of Agriculture CFDA Number: 10.555 State Agency: California Department of Education Pass-through number: 13391 Criteria: The Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act and the Children Nutrition Act of 1966 required that by November 15th of each school year, the LEA must verify the current free and reduced price eligibility of households selected from a sample of applications that it has approved for free and reduced meals, unless the LEA is otherwise exempt from the verification requirement. The standard sample size is the lesser of 3 percent or 3000 of the approved applications on file as of October 1, selected from error-prone applications. Alternative sample sizes are available only if the LEA?s non-response rate for the preceding school year?s verification was less than 20%. Condition: The District selected the alternative sample size while performing the verification test, however they were ineligible to do so as the non-response rate for the preceding school year?s verification was more than 20%. Context: The verification collection from prior year noted a 50% response rate. As such, the District should have selected samples from the ?error-prone applications? as opposed to all applications as allowed under the alternative sample size. Cause: The District was not aware they were ineligible to use the alternative sample size. Effect: The District did not perform verifications over the error prone applications. Recommendation: We recommend the District review the requirements for the verification testing and ensure they are using the correct sampling method. Views of Responsible Officials and Planned Corrective Actions: The District will ensure that the correct verification sample for the National School Lunch Program is used in the future. We will continue to use the alternative sample size from eTrition as long as our non-response rate from the preceding school year's verification was less than 20%. If our prior-year non-response rate is greater than 20% we will sample 3% of our total applications selecting from error-prone applications.