USDA: School-lunch error rate at 15.8 percent, but getting better

The error rates for the school lunch and school breakfast programs “remain unacceptably high,” said the USDA, although there are signs of improvement, such as a lower overall error rate. In a report, the department said schools had an error rate of 15.8 percent for the $11.8-billion lunch program and 23.1 percent for the $3.3-billion breakfast program – a total of $2.7 billion for the 2012-13 school year that included over- and under-payments.

Error rates are expected to be a salient topic today at the first hearing by the Senate Agriculture Committee on reauthorization of child nutrition programs. (For details about the hearing or to watch a webcast, click here.)

More than 30 million students at nearly 100,000 schools eat hot meals daily through the lunch program; two-thirds of them get a reduced-price or a free meal. Some 13 million schoolchildren are served daily through the breakfast program; 85 percent of them get a reduced-price or a free meal.

Schools are responsible for assessing which students are eligible for assistance, accounting for meals served, and for accurately reporting their operations. Errors can occur anywhere along the bookkeeping chain, from when students are certified for or denied financial assistance, when a trayful of food is counted as a reimbursable meal, or when the number of reimbursable meals is tallied.

The biggest area for error is certification – deciding when students are eligible for a free or reduced-price meal. The USDA said its study “found that about one in five children (20.2 percent) in the free, reduced-price or denied categories were certified into the wrong category.” Nearly 10 percent of school lunch and 11 percent of school breakfast spending was tied to inccorect certifications. Errors can stem from a family’s errors on an application or a mistake by the school in processing the forms. About 70 percent of the errors in certification involved overpayment and 30 percent involved underpayment, about the same as in a study five years ago.

To reduce certification errors, the USDA is trying to increase the number of schools offering universal free lunch – available in schools in high-poverty areas – as well as making broader use of “direct certification” of children who are enrolled in other social programs and improving the form used by families to apply. The error rates for direct certification and the free-lunch-for-all Community Eligibility Provision are much lower than with paper applications.

“Reducing errors in our school meal programs is a top priority for USDA,” said Kevin Concannon, undersecretary for nutrition, in a statement.

Meal-claiming was the second-largest area for errors and aggregation was the smallest. The department said aggregation showed the greatest reduction in errors.

Along with releasing the report, the USDA said it was offering $8.5 million in grants to help schools improve oversight of their food programs. “In addition, a new rule is being proposed to help states better target resources to districts at highest risk of improper payments,” said the department.

Senate Agriculture chairman Pat Roberts says his visits to schools in Kansas show that more flexibility is needed in school meals, especially for smaller and less-wealthy districts. The School Nutrition Association wants leeway in reforms enacted in 2010 that require schools to serve more fruit, vegetables and whole grains, and less salt, fat and sugar. SNA says the healthier menus are expensive and the government is not compensating schools fully for them. It is asking for an additional 35-cent reimbursement for each breakfast and lunch served.

Some 95 percent of schools comply with the updated meal standards, says USDA. “Now that we are so close to the finish line, it would be unwise to roll back healthy-meal standards just as they are beginning to work to ensure our kids have access to the balanced, nutritious food doctors recommend,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The USDA report, “Program error in the NSLP and SBP,” is available here.

A USDA summary of the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act is available here.

The School Nutrition Association position paper is available here.