By Richard Bammer

California families with public school students will no longer be saddled with filling out applications to make sure the children are eligible for free or reduced-cost lunches.

Instead, local school districts will use Medi-Cal data as a way to certify eligibility, state schools chief Tom Torlakson noted in a press release issued just before the Thanksgiving holiday break.

The automated process, which affects more than 800,000 K-12 students and began after July 1, includes information from California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) in order to streamline the process through “direct certification,” Cynthia Butler, a spokeswoman for Torlakson, wrote in the prepared statement.

Source: Districts to use automated process to certify free lunch-eligible students