Direct Certification and Direct Verification

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Direct Certification and Direct Verification

• Indiana Department of Education
• School Community Nutrition Programs

John Todd Spring 2006
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• Today were going to talk about two very similar
  processes that accomplish two very different
  results. Keeping them separate can be difficult.
  Please be certain that you recognize the
  differences and know when it is appropriate to
  use the two different technologies.
• Both Technologies are hosted within the
  Department of Educations STN (Student Test
  Number) Application Center. https//ac.doe.state.i
  n.us/
• Direct Certification, typically used before the
  school year starts, is an alternative to
  (replaces) the traditional paper application for
  free meals. We will also describe how it can be
  used at times other than the beginning of the
  year.
• Direct Verification, is a method that helps you
  verify traditional (paper) applications that have
  been selected for VERIFICATION. This process
  that starts on October 1 and continues through
  November 15.
• Well talk about Direct Certification first.

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Direct Certification has been available in
Indiana since 1989. It has been web-based for
the last three years. Until recently, we
received one file of Food Stamp/TANF data
annually. With the development of Direct
Verification this past year, we now receive Food
Stamp/TANF data every month. The receiving of
data more frequently has in turn enabled Direct
Certification to move beyond being available only
at the beginning of the school year. Indiana is
participating in an exciting new Federal Pilot
Project that will enable us to verify
applications with Medicaid data. Medicaid data
cannot be used for Direct Certification
however. Family and Social Services administers
Food Stamps, TANF, and Medicaid in Indiana. They
have been very cooperative. They feel that both
Direct Certification and Direct Verification meet
their needs as they deal with decreased staff
levels in county offices that sometimes made
requests for information from LEAs difficult.
Id like to acknowledge their support and
continuing cooperation.
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Direct Certification

• Direct Certification is AN ALTERNATIVE to the
  Traditional paper application.
• Students can be certified eligible for a FREE
  lunch (not reduced) without the parent having to
  complete the application or the school having to
  approve the application. Please note that
  currently there is no Direct Certification for
  Reduced Price students.
• Eligibility for Free Lunch is based on the
  current student participation in either the Food
  Stamp Program and or the TANF Program. (Both
  programs happen to have an eligibility similar to
  the Free Lunch 130 of Poverty rate.

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Direct Certification (contd)

• Benefits of Direct Certification
• Reach students who might not otherwise receive a
  free meal (outreach).
• Streamline the application process for Food
  Service Administrators.
• Cut down on the number of applications, and in
  doing so, reduce the number of applications that
  must be VERIFIED.
• A convenience to parents.
• More accurate.

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Direct Certification (contd)

• Just remember that Direct Certification DOES NOT
  REPLACE the need to hand out traditional paper
  applications to the students who arent Directly
  Certified. It will however hopefully reduce
  GREATLY the number of parents that have to
  complete an Application for Free and Reduced
  Price Meals and the number of Applications that
  school administrators have to process. More on
  this later.

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Direct Certification (contd)

• Weve had Direct Certification since 1989. It
  has been voluntary until now. Mandatory Direct
  Certification is being phased in on this
  schedule
• School Year 2006-2007 (Summer 2006)
• LEAs with Enrollment     25,000 or more
• School Year 2007-2008 (Summer 2007)
• LEAs with Enrollment of 10,000 or more
• School Year 2008-2009 (Summer 2008)
• All LEAs

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Direct Certification (contd)

• Direct Certification is traditionally used in the
  middle of the summer, prior to the start of
  school, pre-registration activities, and the
  distribution of applications.
• We will, however discuss enhancements that make
  it possible to use Direct Certification
  throughout the year.

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Direct Certification (contd)

• You should start Direct Certification as soon as
  you have your best guess as to fall enrollment
  after youve rolled the student master over,
  promoting students, reassigning to new buildings,
  and deleting the Springs graduating seniors.
  Direct Certification is an art, not a science, we
  know that there will be kids on this list who
  dont show up in the fall, and new enrolling
  students who wont be listed. Do it anyway.
• Lets get started! Well talk generally first,
  then look at screen shots of the computer system
  later.

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Direct Certification (contd)

• Your first choice is whether to use the
  Traditional Method or the STN Method. The names
  can be somewhat misleading.
• The Traditional Method has its name because it
  most closely resembles the way Direct
  Certification worked for its first 13 (pre-web
  enabled) years in Indiana. You upload your
  student information in a specially formatted file
  dedicated to Direct Certification and we use that
  information to match against the Food Stamp and
  TANF records.

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Direct Certification (contd)

• The STN Method on the other hand doesnt even
  require an upload of information AT ALL. We
  essentially build a list of your projected fall
  enrollment from existing STN information sources
  already in the Department of Education and match
  that list against the Food Stamp and TANF
  records.
• Pretty slick!

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Direct Certification (contd)

• ?
• If one method requires you to first create a
  file and then upload it before you can process
  the matches, and the other method doesnt require
  an upload file at all Why would you choose the
  Traditional method? (None of us like extra work
  after all.)

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Direct Certification (contd)

• Well, there are some pretty good reasons,
  particularly if youre a larger school.
• Either way you do it, well match your students
  against the Food Stamp and TANF program records
  by matching on
• First Name
• Last Name
• Date of Birth
• County of Residence
• We also do a sound alike match where every thing
  is the same as above except that the first names,
  while not identical, are very similar.
  DeJa/Deja, La Tisha/Latisha, Johnnie/Johnny.
• The exact matches are listed separately from
  the sound alike matches and must be downloaded
  separately.

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Direct Certification (contd)

• But. If you use the traditional method there are
  some BIG advantages that will allow you to
  process and use the list of matched student names
  more conveniently.
• Only if you first UPLOAD a file with the
  Traditional Method will the DOWNLOADED file
  contain your local student ID Number. This may
  make loading the results back into your student
  enrollment database easier. Either way the file
  will have the STN number, which some of you use
  in your local database.
• Also, only if you first UPLOAD a file with the
  Traditional Method, will the DOWNLOADED file of
  matched names contain the mailing address from
  school records or the parent/guardian name.
• These elements making identifying sound alike
  matches easier (more on this later), and these
  elements also make it possible to run your
  mail-merge, letters to households, directly from
  the downloaded file, without having to first load
  the results of direct certification back into
  your student administration software database.
  This can be a big advantage with all the tasks
  that have to be completed in a short time before
  school starts.

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Direct Certification (contd)

• While the STN method allows smaller units, who
  might not otherwise have the expertise to
  participate in the process to use Direct
  Certification, those who can produce the needed
  file should use the Traditional Method.

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Direct Certification (contd)

• Whether you use the Traditional or STN Method,
  the system allows you to download results almost
  immediately from the states website. While your
  results may vary, most schools can Directly
  Certify around 50 of their Free Students.
• After youve downloaded the list of matches you
  need to verify the list of sound alike matches.
  If you used the traditional method, it should be
  pretty easy because the two versions of the first
  name (Donnie/Donny or LaDona/La Donna) will be
  right next to each other in columns and the
  street address from your school records will be
  right next to the Food Stamp program address for
  the family.

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Direct Certification (contd)

• Your next step is to mail households a
  notification that their student has been directly
  certified for a free lunch and that they dont
  have to complete an application or do anything
  else.
• The parent must be given the option of rejecting
  the Free Lunch benefit. Some parents for
  personal reasons, dont want their child to
  receive a free lunch.
• We have a sample letter on our website for this
  purpose.

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Direct Certification (contd)

• Youve now completed the Direct Certification
  steps and hopefully youve gotten up to half of
  your free lunch students certified for free
  lunches and you havent even handed out a single
  application (or had to approve one.)

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Direct Certification (contd)

• Now comes the tuff part
• Since youve already approved quite a few
  students for free lunch, it would be best if you
  didnt then give them an application to fill out.
• That would confuse the parents.
• They might fill it out anyway and mail it back.
• Youd have to either spend time filtering them
  out or waste time approving an application that
  didnt need to be filed in the first place.

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Direct Certification (contd)

• There are a variety of ways to do this based on
  how you have traditionally distributed
  applications and how you handle pre-registration
  of students at the beginning of the year. Talk
  with peers who have used direct certification for
  a couple of years.
• Some ideas
• Sort the listings of matched students by building
  and give each building secretary a list of the
  students who will probably attend that school who
  are already directly certified. Those parents
  WOULD NOT receive an application at the time of
  pre-registration. (Everybody else would of
  course.)
• Load whos directly certified back into the
  student database, and mail all other households
  an application in the mail.
• There are other ways talk to your peers.
• Just remember, while Direct Certification will
  cut down on the number of applications it does
  not mean you dont have to distribute
  applications at the beginning of the year to
  students and households that werent directly
  certified.
• If a parent does accidently fill out an
  application even though their students were
  directly certified, you can now disregard the
  application. This was not true in past years.

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Direct Certification (contd)

• Let see how all this is done now by taking a look
  at DOEs STN Application Center.

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Application Center

• Both Direct Certification and Direct Verification
  are hosted on the Indiana DOEs Application
  Center. It is a secure web portal that is used
  for all transactions between LEAs (public and
  private) and the IDOE that involve sensitive
  student information. It is protected by Secure
  HTTP (https) and/or Virtual Private Network (VPN)
  technologies.
• It is also used for all Individual Student Level
  reporting, as well as most other formal State
  Data Collections
• All this is probably new most food service
  personnel. Dont worry there are people who use
  this system every day in your corporation and
  they might even be the people who upload and
  download data for you. Dont call our office to
  get a login password, those are assigned locally.
  Talk to your technical people, or find out
  who files most of the required STN reports for
  your corporation.

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https//ac.doe.state.in.us/
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Request the Matches (Download files here
File Upload for Traditional Method
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First the upload step, IF youre using the
Traditional Method
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Pressing the browse button will open up a file
open dialogue box. Youll open the file on your
system.
Uploaded data files can be Comma Delimited, Fix
Length (Positional) or XML. This step is
OPTIONAL and used only in the Traditional
Method.
Then press Transfer
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Wait a little while (get a cup of coffee or visit
the office water cooler) and come back and check
to see how many records loaded and if there were
errors. This is handled the same as all other
file uploads in the STN system. Those people in
your school corporation who use the STN system
will understand this process.
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Now its time to process the download results
that will consist of two lists of students who
are Directly Certified for Free Lunch
Eligibility
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Request the Matches (Download files here)
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(No Transcript)
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If you didnt upload a file, dont request a
Traditional Match, you wont get any results in
the output. However, if you did upload a file
you can still request an STN match. Do them both
if you like and compare the results.
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Most of you will probably pick Comma Delimited.
The file will probably open up locally on your PC
as an Excel Spreadsheet
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At the Beginning of the year youll want to
Retrieve all Matches.
New Feature! You can now rerun Direct
Certification at any time of the year and if you
dont want to see all the previously reported
names, select Retrieve only new matches.
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Another New Feature! If you used the Traditional
Match Method and uploaded a student enrollment
file, weve added a new optional field at the end
that you can use to arbitrarily assign groups
to classes of records. You can then limit your
matching results to records that match that
field. This and the previously described
feature that allows you to download only new
results give you capabilities to flexibly use the
system throughout the year.
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• System offers essentially instant results. LEAs
  stay logged in until the file links appear here
  or here.
• Exact Match First Name, Last Name, County of
  Residence, Date of Birth
• Sound Alike Match Last Name, County of
  Residence, Date of Birth and First Names Sound
  Alike using ORACLEs soundex() function.
  La Quisha
  Laquesha
• Click on file links to retrieve files.

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• Dont forget that once a student has been
  Directly Certified for Free meals, hes eligible
  for the remainder of the school year and the
  first 30 days of the next school year.
• This is important to realize if you do multiple
  Direct Certification matches during the year.
  Each time you request matches, youll be matching
  against the most current program records. A
  family on Food Stamps in August, may not be on
  Food Stamps in December or January. The child is
  eligible however, once hes been determined to be
  eligible. This is no different than the fact
  that families submitting paper applications are
  no longer required to notify the school if their
  income changes or they become ineligible for Food
  Stamps.

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• The Process weve just described is a batch
  process, involving the matching of large amounts
  of records. It is the system to use and the
  beginning of the year.
• With the new features Ive just mentioned, its
  also now ideal for checking for new students that
  can be certified at periodic intervals throughout
  the school year.

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• Weve added one more feature though that we think
  will make the system even easier. Weve added an
  individual Direct Certification look up screen
  that can help you identify individual students in
  a flexible manner. It can be a real problem
  solver.
• Often we have the problem of one child in a
  family of three or four that isnt matched when
  all the siblings are. Often its the case that
  one child had a birth date typed wrong, or maybe
  the one child has a different last name in the
  food stamp records, but not on the school
  records.

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• Weve developed an individual Direct
  Certification Look Up that allows you to search
  for one record in a variety of flexible formats.
• You could also use this method to quickly search
  when a new child is admitted to your school
  district at some time other than the first of the
  year.

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Lookup Direct Certification
You may not see all these choice, depending on
the permissions you have been given.
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You can search by Case Number if you think you
know it
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or You can search by Student Information
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Or You can search by Guardian Information
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• Which ever type of search you conducted, youll
  see the results displayed in the bottom half of
  the screen

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Click on the view icon to display the results
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Print this screen and save a paper copy for your
audit trail
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• An important thing to remember about Direct
  Certification results is that they are based on
  the most current information which will usually
  be the preceding month.
• You may get different results if you rerun a
  process at a different time, but once a student
  is certified, hes eligible for the free meal for
  the remainder of the year and the first 30 days
  of the next school year.

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Challenges and Open Issues

• Children in households that arent matched.
• Those who individually receive FS, but werent
  matched for some reason. Try an individual
  lookup.
• Those who dont individually receive FS, but are
  in a household that does. Feds may be issuing a
  policy on this.
• Indiana will be adding features that make
  Multiple Direct Certification Processings during
  the year convenient. Do we mandate or at least
  strongly encourage it?
• Identify transferring students (between LEAs) as
  eligible and directly certify. (Portability). We
  have the possibility of Directly Certifying a
  child at the time of transfer into a new
  district.
• The recent policy on "Disregarding Applications
  where its possible to Directly Certify in a big
  step forward.
• What about Direct Cert information in Provision 2
  and 3 schools. We Directly Certify by LEA, not
  school, so we have data. Do we need to
  officially forget what we know? Agencies like
  Covering Kids and Families would love the
  information.
• Why cant we Directly Certify based on Medicaid
  Data? A Pilot Project to Directly Certify based
  on Medicaid data is authorized but not funded by
  Reauthorization Legislation. Indiana might be
  interested in pursuing this.

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Direct Verification

• It is the job of Direct Verification to help you
  VERIFY Applications for Free and Reduced Price
  Meals .
• Just as Direct Certification is only a part of
  your total effort to determine the eligibility of
  your students, Direct Verification is only a part
  of your total Verification activities.
  Verification starts on October 1 and extends
  through November 15.

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• Your first Verification Activity is to select
  your sample of applications. It is beyond this
  presentations topic to go into the selection of
  that sample. Jill Haller alluded to it in this
  mornings general session.
• Once you have selected your sample, you should
  attempt to verify the sample through the use of
  Direct Verification techniques first.
• Obviously, any selected applications based on
  categorical eligibility should be attempted.
  With the inclusion of Medicaid data (more on this
  later) other applications might be verifiable
  also.

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Benefits of Direct Verification

• Hopefully easier for LEA officials.
• Eliminates in many cases the need to contact
  households for verification. This reduces the
  problem of high non-response rates.
• Most beneficial for students and family.
  Preserves the benefit of the Annual Application
  for households filing categorical applications.
  Traditional Verification demands proof of program
  participation in most recent month, where
  Direct Verification can verify with data going
  back 180 days. This is one of the most important
  benefits of Direct Verification.

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• It is important to realize that if you cannot
  verify an application with Direct Verification
  techniques, you still must give the parent the
  opportunity to provide evidence that verifies
  their application.
• NO STUDENT is ever removed from Free or Reduced
  Price Lunch rolls as a result of Direct
  Verification.

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• Direct Verification verifies applications by
  finding matching participation in either the Food
  Stamps or TANF programs like Direct
  Certification. However, unlike Direct
  Certification, an application can be verified if
  any Food Stamp or TANF program participation can
  be found within 180 days prior to the date of the
  application. In this way Direct Verifications
  criterion for finding matches is looser than
  Direct Certifications. This is in keeping with
  the less stringent role of verification. We
  arent determining eligibility, were only
  verifying eligibility.
• For these reasons, its important to make sure to
  use Direct Certification and Verification
  techniques only in the appropriate places. A
  student who was on Food Stamps up until 3 months
  ago, could not be Directly Certified, but an
  application COULD be verified.

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• We will soon be adding Medicaid records to the
  records used for Verification. (But not for
  Certification.)
• While Food Stamp and TANF program records will
  only verify Free Meal Applications, Medicaid
  records will verify some Reduced Price Meal
  applications.

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• Dont forget, use the Direct Verification
  techniques only on the sample selected. You
  arent verifying all your applications.
• If you have 1000 applications for free meals,
  youre probably verifying 30 or fewer
  applications.
• First see if any of the applications selections
  were based on categorical eligibility with either
  Food Stamps or TANF listed. Check them with a
  Direct Verification lookup.
• If you dont have all that many to do, it would
  probably be worth your time to look up all of the
  sample, even the income based applications.
  While the parents didnt indicate that they were
  on Food Stamps or TANF, they still might have
  been or, maybe they are receiving Medicaid
  benefits. The system is fast and shouldnt be
  that time consuming.
• Remember, for every match you find with Direct
  Verification
• Its one less parent/household letter you have to
  send out.
• You dont run the risk of the parent not
  responding.
• Continuity of the benefit for the student
• Less hassle for everybody.
• Heres how it works

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Chose Direct Verification now
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Unlike, direct certification which matches
against the most current Food Stamp and TANF
data, Direct Certification searches back 180 days
from the data of application. So the date of the
parent/guardian signed application is important.
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Works just like Direct Certification, search by
Case Number......
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or Student Information
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or Parent/Guardian Information
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After you search, regardless of the method, the
matching records are then displayed. Click on
the view icon to display the record
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This Certification Date means theyre on Food
Stamps THROUGH 11/20/2005
PRINT THIS FOR YOUR VERIFICATION RECORDS
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• Whats next
• Were developing a batch process form of Direct
  Verification that would allow you to process
  verifications in a manner similar to traditional
  Direct Certification. If you are a large school
  that uses database software to manage your
  applications we hope to be able to help you by
  the October of 2006.
• Have your software select your sample and have
  the software export a file containing the data
  from the selected applications.
• You would then upload the file in a manner
  similar to traditional direct certification,
  then process and download any matching records.
• Watch for announcements of this system and the
  specifications of the upload file.

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Challenges Opportunities

• Schools need to be encouraged to use Direct
  Verification because under regular (household
  notification) Verification, families with
  categorical applications may effectively loose
  the annual eligibility otherwise granted by the
  new reauthorization rules. Example Family was
  on FS in August, but removed in September. If
  you verify in November, Direct Verification
  searching back 180 days from Application or
  forward to dates between Application and
  Verification will identify the family as eligible
  for free lunches. Traditional Verification in
  non-income or categorical applications seem to
  have to prove participation in FS/TANF in most
  recent month.
• If Direct Certification is Mandatory in a couple
  of years, there wont be all that many
  categorical applications to verify with this
  technique, unless we start verifying based on
  other Means Tested programs such as Medicaid.
  Were going to pilot test use of Medicaid data
  with USDA this fall/winter.
• Make sure Direct Verification technology is used
  only for verifying applications and not to make
  the initial eligibility determination. Thats
  Direct Certification and it uses a slightly
  different rule. (Direct Verification-180 day
  rule, Direct Certificationcurrent data.
• Policy 05-37 seems to enable use of this
  technology, when properly understood, to let LEA
  officials help parents fill out application.

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A Valuable Resource for Discussing Direct
Certification and Direct Verification

• Reducing Paperwork and Connecting Low-Income
  Children With School Meals Opportunities under
  The New Child Nutrition Reauthorization Law
  (November 2004)
• http//www.cbpp.org/11-16-04fa.pdf
• Zoë Neuberger
• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• http//www.cbpp.org
• (Their Summary of Changes Made to the
  Certification and Verification Processes.. was
  distributed at the Kansas City Meeting in the
  binder

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Indiana Department of Education School and
Community Nutrition Programs (317)
232-0850 contact Director Mike
Gill mgill_at_doe.state.in.us Program
Administration Jill Haller jhaller_at_doe.state.in.us
Finance/Technology John Todd jtodd_at_doe.state.in.u
s