Anonymous wrote:Community eligibility schools don’t require DARMs forms because they everyone receives free meals for attending.

There's some confusion, I think, because some schools are designated as "community schools" (a term used for several years). There was a lot of overlap between Title I and community schools. When the county switched to "community eligibility" in place of FARMs, it just added one more category. Some schools are all three, some are only one or two.

Viers Mill is one of the schools that lost Title I, and is still a community school (but NOT a community eligibility school). The principal elected to go forward with FARMs forms this year with the expectation of getting the Title I label back.

The CEP label isn't accurate for many reasons, as not everyone who qualifies for government benefits is comfortable requesting them (they don't feel they really need them, don't want to be perceived as freeloader, mixed status within the family and better safe than sorry, not aware of their own eligibility for benefits, etc). The FARMs forms just went by straight income and household size, and are much more accurate, in my opinion.

Anonymous wrote:Community eligibility schools don’t require DARMs forms because they everyone receives free meals for attending.

Yes, I understand that. As I stated above, he problem is data from the FARMS forms are used to determine eligibility for Title 1 funding, and some CEP schools lost Title 1 funding because they didn't collect this data (and the alternate sources of data undercount poverty if the families are undocumented).

Community eligibility schools don’t require DARMs forms because they everyone receives free meals for attending.

Anonymous wrote:I work at a CEP and we were working hard at Open House to get them to fill out the forms. I’m not sure why central would tell them not to unless it is a recycled message from last year.

OP here. The text I quoted in my OP was in the systemwide email sent out to families on August 22. MoCo Show published the text of the email here: https://mocoshow.com/2024/08/22/mcps-things-to-know-for-august-22/

We are not in a CEP school and for various reasons I am not going to reach out to central office myself about this, but I think it's pretty terrible. If I were a family or staff in a CEP school I'd raise hell.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did you email someone at MCPS to ask? Because that would make more sense than posting here.

It would, but they probably also wouldn’t directly answer OP’s question either.

So just don’t do anything. Got it.

I work at a CEP and we were working hard at Open House to get them to fill out the forms. I’m not sure why central would tell them not to unless it is a recycled message from last year.

Anonymous wrote:Did you email someone at MCPS to ask? Because that would make more sense than posting here.

It would, but they probably also wouldn’t directly answer OP’s question either.

Did you email someone at MCPS to ask? Because that would make more sense than posting here.

Anonymous wrote:Are you saying schools are trying to lose Title 1 status to attract certain types of families to neighborhood or schools?

No, I am trying to understand why Central Office is sending the message that families in CEP schools do not need to fill in FARMS forms, when the data from those forms is how certain schools with large populations of undocumented families qualify for Title 1 funding.

Are you saying schools are trying to lose Title 1 status to attract certain types of families to neighborhood or schools?

Isn't this why some schools lost their Title 1 funding?

From the August 22 email:
"Students at schools participating under the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) are eligible for free meals and do not need to apply for FARMS. We encourage all families with students enrolled at non-CEP schools to complete a Free and Reduced-price Meals Application. All meals are free for students who qualify for the program."