Electing Community Eligibility for your school(s) or district

These instructions are meant to serve as written and visual step-by-step instructions to aid in gathering and evaluating student eligibility data for election to the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). An accurate Identified Student Percentage (ISP) is crucial to ensuring sponsors operating the CEP receive the appropriate Federal reimbursement rate for their School Meal Programs. This requires good reporting practices, both from sponsors to the State agency, and from the State agency to USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service.

Sponsors electing CEP are required to provide all election documentation to the state agency for review by June 30th.

Information to pull for Community Eligibility Provision

1. Download enrollment list for school (or schools) directly from student system for April 1 (If April 1 isa weekend, pull for the first Monday following April 1).

a. This list must be directly from the student enrollment system. Often a registrar or studentservices representative can help to gather this list if Nutrition Services does not have accessto the system.

b. This list should be provided to you electronically in an excel format and include studentname, school name (number), SSID number, birthdate, District ID number, Student address,etc. Download the entire district’s enrollment. Even if you are not applying for district wideCEP, this will help you later in finding extended student benefits.

i. Save this list in a CEP election folder on your computer. This will be the clean copy ofyour enrollment list.

ii. Save a second copy and name it “Working Enrollment List”. This is your ISPvalidation list.

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2. Choose from one of the following options to gather your Directly Certified students.a. On Demand Matching - A new feature to the ODE DC Match Site is the ability to upload

enrollment data for a direct match to DHS SNAP files.b. To Upload enrollment, follow the On Demand Upload Formatting and Match instructionsc. Download and save match results as an excel document to your CEP Election Folder

OR d. Download Direct Certification matches from current school year – July through April. Do not

include matches made after the first match download of April (usually the first Monday).e. This list must be directly from the ODE DC Match site, downloaded and saved on your

computer as an excel document.

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(Example of Direct Certification Match List)

3. Download Non-match list from the current year (July-April) Save this file as an excel worksheet toyour CEP election folder on your computer.

4. Gather homeless, migrant, and foster documentation. This includes emails from migrant student orhomeless student liaisons, State Agency letters of foster student status, and DHS SNAP confirmationletters. Scan and save all such documents in the CEP Election folder on your computer.

a. Lists provided by homeless or migrant liaisons must be from the liaison’s email or have theliaison’s signature.

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How to Determine Identified Student Percentage

1. On Demand Upload lista. Student matches indicated with “SNAP” listing next to their information. Save this list to

your CEP election folder.OR

2. Direct Certification Downloada. Use the ODE Matching tool (provided on the CEP website:

http://www.oregon.gov/ode/students-and-family/childnutrition/SNP/Pages/CEP.aspx) tomatch students on the direct certification list to students on the enrollment list.

i. Save this table as part of your back up documentation in your CEP election folder.

3. On the working enrollment list, add a Certification Method column:

a. In the Certification Method column, indicate the students matched by On Demand Uploador ODE Match tool by entering “Direct Cert List”.

b. If a student was previously indicated as directly certified in your records, but did not matchthrough the upload or match tool, it may be that there is some discrepancy between theinformation in the sponsor enrollment system and the information in the DHS database. Thiscan be anything from misspelling of a first name to the hyphenation of a last name. You maystill manually search the downloaded direct certification lists in these cases. If you find astudent through manual search, indicate this by highlighting the student name in the directcertification list and saving it to your CEP election folder.

4. Extended eligibility – a student receives eligibility from a sibling/household member on the DC list.a. To show connection between student on DC list and an extended eligibility student you can:

i. Use the enrollment list to determine students with matching addresses – see theExtending Benefits training. (This requires that you download your full districtenrollment list). If you verify extended benefits this way, save this document to yourCEP Election folder on your computer.

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ii. If you do not have addresses on your enrollment list, search for and save a screenshot of registration system showing the students in the same household – sameaddress or same guardian – in the CEP Election folder on your computer.

b. Once you have information validating the extension of benefits, make sure to indicate onthe working enrollment list that the student is “DC extended”.

5. Non-match download – this is a list of all children in the DHS system that are receiving SNAPbenefits, but have not been matched to a specific school.

a. When working with the non-match list, students will not have assigned SSID numbers andtherefore cannot be matched using the ODE match tool.

b. Since the downloaded list is in excel format, you can use the data filter option to narrowyour results.

i. Open the non-match list; at the top of the screen in the Data tab, select the Filterbutton. You will see arrowed drop down boxes appear in each heading cell.

Click on the drop down box under city and filter by the city or cities where your students reside. From there, you can filter based on any of the headings listed. Make sure that you check for misspellings of your city name as well (just in case). c. Once the list is filtered, find students by clicking the “Find”button on the far right of the page tool bar; search by student name (last OR first). d. When a matching student name is found, ensure that this is a studentmatch by comparing, birthdate, address, age, etc.

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e. Once a match has been verified, yellow highlight that student row in the non-match list andsave.

f. Indicate on the working enrollment list that a match has been made by entering “DCNonMatch” into the “Certification Method” column.

6. Student search function in DC system – if a student cannot be found on DC list or non-match list, usethe Student Search function on the ODE DC website.

g. If a student match is found through Student Search, click the Pdf icon to the left of thestudent name and save the resulting document to the CEP Election folder on your computer.

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h. On the working enrollment list, indicate that a match has been made by entering “Y Match”in the Match column.

6. Other Categorically Eligible – Migrant/Homeless/Fostera. Review lists/emails/letters provided by migrant or homeless liaisons or State Agencies to

determine if a student listed on the enrolled list matches and qualifies for categoricaleligibility.

b. When a matching student is found, indicate on the working enrollment list that a match hasbeen made by entering “Y liaison list” or “Y letter” into the “Match” column.

c. Save the backup documentation to the CEP election folder.

How to complete the Election Spreadsheet

1. How to complete election spreadsheeta. Download current election spreadsheet from the ODE CEP website:

http://www.oregon.gov/ode/students-and-family/childnutrition/SNP/Pages/CEP.aspx

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b. Use your working enrollment list to add up the accurate number of students in each of the categories listed on the election spreadsheet. (Excel data filters and formulas are great ways to work within this document to determine total numbers)

i. Make sure that each student is only counted once. For instance, a student may be homeless and directly certified, but may only be counted in one of the qualifying categories.

ii. Make sure only students with eligibility certification dates between July and the first dc match in April (first Sunday in April) are included in your count.

c. Once numbers have been determined, complete the election spreadsheet. d. Once you have entered the numbers in the spreadsheet, you will note a CEP percentage in

the last column of the worksheet. This is the Identified Student Percentage (ISP) and is determined by dividing the Total Identified Students by the Total Enrolled Students on April 1 (or first Monday in April) of the election year.

e. To determine your Free Claiming percentage, multiply the CEP percentage by 1.6 and round to two points after the decimal point. For instance, if the CEP ISP percentage is 44.73%, the free claiming percentage is 44.73 x 1.6 = 71.568. The Free Claiming percentage will be 71.57%.

Information to send to ODE to elect CEP

Once you have completed compiling your numbers and have completed the election spreadsheet, you will send the following items in a zipped file through Secure File Transfer to the ODE School Nutrition Mailbox ode.schoolnutrition@state.or.us.

1. The election spreadsheet 2. All primary source documentation saved to your CEP election folder. This includes:

a. The clean enrollment list downloaded from the student database b. The direct certification list downloaded from the ODE match system or the On Demand

Upload list c. The highlighted and saved non-match list downloaded from the ODE match system d. Any homeless, migrant, foster or other agency information used to certify students e. All pdfs saved from student search in the ODE direct certification system f. The saved copy of your completed ODE match tool. (if used) g. The working enrollment list with your completed Certification Method column

3. Make sure that all of the documents required are saved to your CEP election folder.

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4. To zip the folder so that you can send it throughSecure file transfer, do the following: a. Right click on the CEP election folderb. Select Send to and then select Compressed(zipped) folder c. Once you have done this, you will see a folderof the same name “CEP election” with a zipper.

d. This is the file that you will select when youSecure file transfer your information to ode.schoolnutrition@state.or.us

5. Secure File Transfer Instructionsa. Navigate to Secure File Transfer webpage: https://district.ode.state.or.us/home/b. Click on Secure File Transfer from menu in right columnc. After the Secure File Transfer Window opens:

i. Go to Who Receives the file? Find the ode.schoolnutrition mailbox in the ODEEmail List, click on the name and click the arrow to move to the ODE Recipientfield.

ii. Go down to Who is Sending the File? field and enter your email address.iii. Go to Locate your file to send: field and browse for the file you want to sendiv. Enter a message if you have onev. Type in the Image Validation/Send File

vi. Click Send File

The attached file will be sent to the School Nutrition mailbox and you will receive an email from the ODE Helpdesk stating a secure file was sent.

Election Approval

1. ODE Staff will validate the election form numbers based on the supporting primary sourcedocumentation.

2. A letter with the approved election form is returned to you.3. CNPweb is updated to reflect the approved ISP.