Colorado Revised Statutes Title 2. Legislative § 2-2-2003. Poverty study--contract--report--legislative declaration--repeal

(I) Free and reduced-price lunch eligibility for the federal “Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act”, 42 U.S.C. sec. 1751 et seq., is a measure by which school districts receive additional funding through the at-risk factor in the school finance formula;

(II) While many states provide additional funding based on reduced-price lunch eligibility, in Colorado, at-risk funding has traditionally been allocated only for students who are eligible for free lunch;

(III) The federal “Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act”, 42 U.S.C. sec. 1751 et seq., was designed as an anti-hunger program, not as a single proxy for capturing student need. Economic disadvantage is complex and is affected by many factors beyond income, including wealth, local cost of living, and fluctuating household expenses.

(IV) In the long term, Colorado's reliance on free lunch eligibility as the singular poverty proxy for school finance purposes is inaccurate and unsustainable, and serves as a barrier to delivering essential resources to students who need them;

(V) Free lunch eligibility is a binary measure by which a student is considered economically disadvantaged or not and fails to account for varying levels of poverty and the corresponding levels of need that exist among student populations;

(VI) The recent changes to federal policy that allow all students to receive a free lunch without submitting an income eligibility form negatively impacted Colorado's at-risk pupil count in the 2020-21 school year and will continue to do so in the 2021-22 school year, which may result in another undercount and underestimation of resources needed to serve economically disadvantaged students;

(VII) Additionally, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Colorado's decentralized method of collecting income eligibility data created barriers to reaching families who were eligible for pandemic electronic benefit transfer payments, resulting in fewer than half of the eligible children receiving the benefit;

(VIII) Due to the continued use of the misaligned proxy for determining student need and the continued underestimation of economic disadvantage, Colorado students who would benefit the most from additional support are going without it;  and

(IX) State policy can more accurately account for and respond to students' economic circumstances. Other states have moved away from relying on one self-reported measure, such as free and reduced-price lunch eligibility, toward an index of measures of need that automatically qualify students for school meals or for additional funding through the school finance formula.

(I) Ensuring the most accurate count possible of students experiencing economic disadvantage;

(II) Maintaining an individual student indicator of economic disadvantage;

(III) Differentiating among levels of economic disadvantage;

(IV) Decreasing the administrative burden on schools and school districts to collect data and the burden on students and families to prove eligibility;

(V) Allowing for Colorado's long-term ability to identify longitudinal student achievement trends;

(VI) Allowing for coordination across agencies and their use of indicators of economic disadvantage for public program eligibility;

(VII) Ensuring student privacy and confidentiality of student records;  and

(VIII) Ensuring that the approach is inclusive of all students, including those who are homeless or who lack documentation.