Meal Benefit Applications
USDA is no longer offering the exemptions that allowed all students to eat free. Families may apply for free and reduced priced school meals any time during the school year by submitting an application. 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.
Previous-Year 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 30 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 30 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