Discount Matrix and Determining your Discount:
Every school that participates in E-Rate must know their discount percentage. The discount percentage for the E-Rate applicant is based on poverty and location of the population served by the school or library and ranges from 20% (no students eligible for free and reduced lunch) to 90% (over 75% of your student population eligible for free and reduced lunch). For more details on E-Rate discounts please see the USAC Discount Matrix below.
The entire E-Rate program is predicated upon how many students you have that are eligible for free and reduced lunch. It is important to know, schools do not have to participate in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in order to validate their discount level. They only have to have a mechanism for determining how many of their students qualify for free and reduced lunch. There are many ways to do this: Surveys, Medicaid, SNAP, SSI, Federal public housing assistance or Section 8, LIJEAP. For more information please feel free to contact us or follow this link to see more [read more]
Just as important as knowing the acceptable ways is knowing the unacceptable ways to determine eligibility, Feeder School Method, Proportional Method, Extrapolation from non-random samples, Title 1 eligibility.
| INCOME Measured by % of students eligible for the National School Lunch Program |
URBAN LOCATION Discount |
RURAL LOCATION Discount |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| If the % of students in your school that qualifies for the National School Lunch Program is… | …and you are in an URBAN area, your rate will be… |
…and you are in a RURAL area, your rate will be… |
|
| Less than 1% | 20% | 25% | |
| 1% to 19% | 40% | 50% | |
| 20% to 34% | 50% | 60% | |
| 35% to 49% | 60% | 70% | |
| 50% to 74% | 80% | 80% | |
| 75% to 100% | 90% | 90% | |