A friend recently shared some information about several schools in Georgia that are now providing meals, at no apparent cost, to all students; this prompted me to conduct a little research. Many of you with school-aged children have likely heard the term CEP which stands for Community Eligibility Provision, this is a Federal program that allows schools in which 40% or greater of the student body qualifies for free meals, to provide free meals to ALL students. The CEP has been available in all states since the 2014/15 school year, although individual schools must meet certain criteria in order to participate. You can follow the link provided to see which schools within your state are eligible to and/or already participating in the CEP. School districts have until August 31, 2016, to opt into the CEP for the 2016–2017 school year. For the record, the incident that prompted this petition occurred at a school that did NOT qualify for CEP during the 2014/15 school year, however, they DO qualify for the upcoming 2016/17 school year, the school has some 42% of students qualifying for free meals. That being said, just because the school QUALIFIES for the CEP does not mean that they will take advantage of the program. Does the CEP negate the needs for this petition? Absolutely not! There is a lot of mobility in our schools, students come and go often up until the last weeks of the school year. When students from lower-income families, the families that have the greatest impact on the CEP, enroll or disenroll from a given school, that school's CEP eligibility will fluctuate. Students need nutritional stability, they should NEVER have to approach the lunchroom cashier with anxiety, asking whether they will be able to eat or will have their meal tray taken away instead. Yes, there may be fluctuations regarding whether the parent has to maintain a student meal account or the meals are covered by the CEP but that should remain transparent to most students, especially the younger ones. Supporters, and I cannot stress this enough, ESPECIALLY Texas supporters, the next Texas legislature, the 85th, won't begin their session until January 10th 2017, and then their regular season will last only 140 days, until May 29, 2017. In January the nation will be awaiting the swearing in of our 45th president, whoever that may be. Regardless the political turmoil the election of the 45th president will surely bring, I would like this petition to be among the top priorities of the 85th Texas legislature; I need YOUR continued support in order to make that happen. This WILL be on my Facebook page, could I get you to share it on yours as well? Please continue sharing this on all of your social media sites, ask your schools and school board members how they plan to deal with students with depleted meal accounts, ask your school districts if they plan to utilize the CEP, anything done to bring awareness to this issue is beneficial to this cause. Thanks for your support and please take a moment this weekend to reflect on the true purpose of Memorial Day.