The Pennsylvania Department of Education, Division of Food and Nutrition (PDE, DFN) is excited to announce that beginning School Year 2023-2034, the USDA has selected Pennsylvania to expand the Direct Certification for Demonstration project for Households receiving Medicaid, to include students in household where the household income meets the guidelines for reduced price meals. With this change, students will automatically show on the Direct Certification List as directly certified for reduced-price meals via Medicaid (DCMA-R).
This change supports access to school meals by helping to ensure that students eligible for reduced-price meals take advantage of the benefit. Families in this category will no longer need to submit a household application for school meals. This change will also reduce the administrative burden on schools, as fewer household applications will need to be processed and verified.
To implement the DCMA-R function, all online application approval systems and point-of-service systems will require updates to include a feature/category that identifies students who qualify for reduced-price meals via DCMA. All School Food Authorities (SFAs) must communicate this change with their point of service and/or online application approval system vendors as soon as possible to ensure that all changes are implemented to begin with the start of the 2023-2024 School Year (July 1, 2023). Additional details for SFAs to provide to vendors will be provided in the upcoming weeks, however, in the meantime, SFAs are strongly encouraged to make their vendor(s) aware of the upcoming changes.