School Meal Applications
Schools send school meal applications home at the beginning of each school year. However, you may apply for school meals any time during the school year by submitting an application directly to your school or our child nutrition office. You may ask for an application any time during the school year. Meal applications can be picked up at your child's campus or from the Operations Building located at 110 S Bill Jackson, Alvarado, TX. Meal applications can also be completed online through our Skyward Family Access portal.
If you’re earning at or below current Income Eligibility Guidelines, you are encouraged to contact your school or our child nutrition department to fill out a school meal application. Applications are reviewed by our child nutrition department before granting free or reduced price benefits.
Remember that you may have applied for free or reduced price meals and have a pending application, but you must pay for all school meals until you receive an Approval Letter. We receive hundreds of applications each year, and we work hard to process them as fast as possible. It, however, may take up to thirteen days to begin receiving benefits after the application is received by the Child Nutrition Department.
School Meal Applications expire, so you will need to complete a new meal application each school year unless you receive a letter for the current school year stating that you are categorically eligible.
Online Applications
Applications can be completed online through our Skyward Family Access Portal.
Thirty Day Rollover
Because of the time it takes to process applications, students who were free or reduced in the previous year remain at their previous year’s status for the first thirty days of the new school year or until a new application is received and processed. Once a new application is processed, the new status takes over, so if a child was free last year, and an application is processed in the second week of school that qualifies the student for reduced meals, the student’s status will be changed to reduced status on the date that the application is processed not at the end of the thirty day period.
Students, who do not turn in an application that can be processed within this thirty day window, will roll over to paid status and will be responsible for paying for all meals consumed. For this reason it is very important for parents who feel that they may qualify for free lunches to promptly complete and return an application at the beginning of each school year. Parents, who do not qualify for free meals, may qualify for reduced price meals. Reduced price breakfast costs 0 cents, and reduced price lunch costs 0 cents.
22-23 School Year
Meal applications received during the 2019-20 and the 2020-21 school year will not rollover to the 2022-23 school year. For these reasons, all scholars who were categorized as free were rolled over the paid status prior to the start of the 21-22 school year. Families who did not complete an application during the 21-22 school year should complete an application as soon as possible prior to the start of school to try and avoid having to pay for meals. Families are responsible for all meals charged prior to approval of their application.
The thirty day rollover will apply to any applications completed during the 21-22 school year.