SALISBURY — Apparently, there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Beginning in the fall, students enrolled in Rowan-Salisbury Schools, except Summit Virtual Academy, will be provided breakfast and lunch free of charge.

“The Rowan-Salisbury School Nutrition Department will be operating the Community Eligibility Provision, which we call CEP, in 31 of the district’s schools,” said Lisa Altmann, Rowan-Salisbury Director of Nutrition. “Community Eligibility (Provision) eliminates the need to collect and process school meal applications, translating into both administrative and cost savings for the district.”

According to Altmann, CEP is administered through the USDA, has been around for almost a decade and has served some district schools.

“Back then, it started in pilot states,” Altmann said. “We jumped on that bandwagon as early as we could.”

The difference now is that every school will qualify.

So what is CEP exactly?

​​The U.S. Department of Agriculture website indicates that the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) is a non-pricing meal service option for schools and school districts in low-income areas.

The provision allows the nation’s highest-poverty schools and districts to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications. Instead, schools that adopt CEP are reimbursed using a formula based on the percentage of students categorically eligible for free meals based on their participation in other specific means-tested programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

Altmann explained that with the move, the district would not incur any school-meal debt.

“This year, the district had to, out of the general fund, pay back $8,600 to the School Nutrition Department for unpaid meal debt,” Altmann said. “This will eliminate all of that, which is awesome.”

Community eligibility schools are reimbursed based on the number of students automatically eligible for free school meals, reducing school meal certification errors.

“Every year, we have to go through a verification process through USDA,” Altmann said. “This will eliminate that process for us.”

Schools and local education agencies with a minimum identified student population that is greater than 40 percent in the prior school year meet the financial-need eligibility criteria.

Altmann explained that CEP is based on such criteria as medicaid recipient, homelessness and foster-care children among others. It is not based on income.

“A school’s ISP has to be at least 40 percent to qualify,” Altmann said. “Some schools have a higher ISP percentage than others and that allows the School Nutrition Program to group schools together. RSS grouped the schools into 5 groups. By doing this, the program can successfully sustain offering meals at no cost to all students.”

With the program in place, numerous families will be alleviated meal costs for their students.

“It’s a huge deal for the district,” Board member Kevin Jones said. “In no offense to the school system having to put $8,600 toward school meal debt, there are a whole lot of families that had to put $20, $10 or $2 toward that debt as well that maybe was more detrimental to them than it was to us.

“Even thinking about the students who will eat a meal because it’s free that wouldn’t have otherwise because they wouldn’t want to have to worry about what it took to get, now they will be less hungry because they have those free meals.”

The provision is operated on a four-year cycle. The four-year cycle will run from the upcoming year through 2027.