Canton schools switch meal program, require income verification
Canton Public School District said students will receive free meals beginning in August, but parents must now verify household income to ensure the district receives federal reimbursements. The district posted a statement to its Facebook page Wednesday and later revised the message after acknowledging it was not entirely accurate, officials said.
The district switched from the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, to Provision 2, officials said. Under CEP, the Mississippi Department of Education calculates reimbursement amounts largely on student enrollment in federal assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, the department said.
Provision 2 also allows all students to eat for free, but it bases reimbursement on parent-submitted forms that document economic need, Canton officials said. In April, the state Education Department deemed Canton eligible for CEP funding, but the formula based on current program enrollment would have covered only 65% of students’ free meals for the coming school year, district official Beatty said. At that rate, the district concluded CEP would not make financial sense, Beatty said.
Beatty said fewer Canton families are enrolled in programs such as TANF and SNAP, which reduced CEP reimbursements. She said some families may have left assistance rolls after finding jobs at local employers including an Amazon fulfillment center and a Nissan plant, or that families simply did not reenroll in the federal programs.
State data and national researchers offer broader context. Mississippi Department of Human Services spokesperson Mark Jones said 626 fewer people received SNAP in Madison County between June 2025 and June 2026. The Food Research & Action Center found fewer than half of Mississippi districts eligible for CEP participated, and senior policy analyst Erin Hysom said rising costs for food, labor and benefits can make CEP funding insufficient to cover the full expense of universal free meals for some districts.
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