Direct Certification for Free School Meals

Share of K-12 students automatically eligible for free school meals via SNAP/TANF and other programs, by Georgia school, district, and state, 2014-2024.

Source: GOSA
Year coverage: 2014–2024
Updated: annual
Version: 1.0.0
Schema hash: 335e0faaae4e

Detail levels available

StateDistrictSchool · default

Overview

Share of K-12 students directly certified for free school meals across Georgia public schools and districts, published by GOSA for fiscal years 2014-2024 (FY2024 = the 2023-24 school year). Direct certification is the automatic, categorical-eligibility subset of free/reduced-price meal eligibility — a student is directly certified because their household participates in SNAP or TANF, the student is homeless, unaccompanied youth, foster, or migrant, or (from FY2024) the household's Medicaid income is at or below the free/reduced-price-lunch standard — with no household application required. One fact table at three detail levels: school (one row per school), district (one row per district / system, including charters, state agencies, and State Schools), and state (the statewide 'State of Georgia' aggregate, published 2022-2024 only). From FY2020 the underlying numerator and denominator counts are also published. Merges the formerly separate direct_certification_school and direct_certification_district topics.

Row grain: One row per year, district_code, school_code.

Key metric

direct_cert_rate — Direct Cert Rate (proportion)

The single headline value most answers want.

JSON schema →Data contract (YAML) →

Variables

Every column in the fact table. The code is the exact field name the API returns.

Column	Type	Unit	Range	Null?	Description
`year`Year	integer	—	—	no	Georgia fiscal year, equal to the ending (spring) calendar year of the school year (FY2024 = 2023-24). Read from the in-file FISCAL_YEAR column (SCHOOL_YEAR in the 2014 files) and cross-checked against the filename year in both download families. Full description▾ Georgia fiscal year, equal to the ending (spring) calendar year of the school year (FY2024 = 2023-24). Read from the in-file FISCAL_YEAR column (SCHOOL_YEAR in the 2014 files) and cross-checked against the filename year in both download families.
`district_code`District Code	string	—	—	yes	GOSA district/system code (FK to districts dimension), zero-padded to 3 digits; 7-digit charter and State-School codes and 3-digit state-agency codes are preserved unchanged. NULL on the statewide aggregate rows. Beyond the ~180 standard county/city districts the series includes 799 (combined State Schools, 2020+), 890 (Dept. of Corrections, 2019 only), 891 (Dept. of Juvenile Justice, 2017+), 7991893-7991895 (individual State Schools, 2014-2019; superseded by the combined 799 row from 2020), and 782xxxx/783xxxx state and commission charter schools. Full description▾ GOSA district/system code (FK to districts dimension), zero-padded to 3 digits; 7-digit charter and State-School codes and 3-digit state-agency codes are preserved unchanged. NULL on the statewide aggregate rows. Beyond the ~180 standard county/city districts the series includes 799 (combined State Schools, 2020+), 890 (Dept. of Corrections, 2019 only), 891 (Dept. of Juvenile Justice, 2017+), 7991893-7991895 (individual State Schools, 2014-2019; superseded by the combined 799 row from 2020), and 782xxxx/783xxxx state and commission charter schools. Joins districts; adds its label columns.
`school_code`School Code	string	—	—	yes	GOSA school code, zero-padded to 4 characters (composite FK to schools dimension with district_code; not globally unique on its own). Populated on school rows only — district and state aggregate rows carry NULL. The 2014-2016 CSVs publish the padded form natively; the 2017-2024 .xls files publish unpadded 3/4-digit codes that are zero-filled to match. Full description▾ GOSA school code, zero-padded to 4 characters (composite FK to schools dimension with district_code; not globally unique on its own). Populated on school rows only — district and state aggregate rows carry NULL. The 2014-2016 CSVs publish the padded form natively; the 2017-2024 .xls files publish unpadded 3/4-digit codes that are zero-filled to match. Joins schools; adds its label columns.
`direct_cert_rate`Direct Cert Rate	number	proportion	—	yes	Share of K-12 students automatically eligible for free meals (via SNAP/TANF, foster, homeless, migrant, or Medicaid), on a 0-1 scale. Full description▾ Share of K-12 students directly certified for free school meals, on the 0-1 scale (0.69 = 69%). Bronze publishes 0-100 (integer percent in 2014-2016, one-decimal float thereafter); divided by 100 per data-cleaning-standards §4 and rounded to 3 decimals to strip .xls binary-float artifacts (82.400002 -> 0.824). Bounded — never exceeds 1.0 in any year. Never NULL (the source has no suppression). Where the FY2020+ counts exist, the rate reconciles with num_direct_cert_students / num_k12_students to within one-decimal-percent rounding (max observed deviation 0.0005). Two methodology breaks: FY2017 excludes foster students (FY2018+ re-includes them), and FY2024 adds the Medicaid (DC-M) category — comparisons crossing 2016->2017, 2017->2018, or 2023->2024 are not apples-to-apples.
`num_direct_cert_students`Number Direct Cert Students	integer	count	—	yes	Headcount of K-12 students directly certified — the numerator of direct_cert_rate (bronze K12_POVERTY_STUDENT_CT). Published FY2020 onward only; NULL for 2014-2019. Always at most num_k12_students (enforced by a quality check). Full description▾ Headcount of K-12 students directly certified — the numerator of direct_cert_rate (bronze K12_POVERTY_STUDENT_CT). Published FY2020 onward only; NULL for 2014-2019. Always at most num_k12_students (enforced by a quality check).
`num_k12_students`Number K12 Students	integer	count	—	yes	Total K-12 enrollment used as the denominator of direct_cert_rate (the NSLP K-12 enrollment base — not the October/March FTE enrollment published by the enrollment topics; bronze K12_STUDENT_COUNT). Published FY2020 onward only; NULL for 2014-2019. Strictly positive where present (enforced by a quality check). Full description▾ Total K-12 enrollment used as the denominator of direct_cert_rate (the NSLP K-12 enrollment base — not the October/March FTE enrollment published by the enrollment topics; bronze K12_STUDENT_COUNT). Published FY2020 onward only; NULL for 2014-2019. Strictly positive where present (enforced by a quality check).

Filters

Query parameters the fact endpoint accepts. Comma-separated values are OR within a parameter; multiple parameters AND together.

Parameter	Kind	Allowed values	Notes
`year`	year_exact	any value	—
`year_min`	year_range	any value	—
`year_max`	year_range	any value	—
`detail`	detail	`districtsschoolsstates`	enum-enforced, default: schools
`district_code`	foreign_key	any value	multi-value
`school_code`	foreign_key	any value	multi-value
`district_type`	dimension_attribute	7 allowed values▾ `commission_charter` `resa` `standard` `state_agency` `state_charter` `state_school` `state_special`	multi-value, enum-enforced

Example requests

Run these against the base URL — they return live data.

All rows (first page), schools level

curl "https://georgiacivicdata.org/api/v1/education/direct_certification"

schools data for 2024

curl "https://georgiacivicdata.org/api/v1/education/direct_certification?year=2024"

One district (code 601), 2024

curl "https://georgiacivicdata.org/api/v1/education/direct_certification?district_code=601&year=2024&detail=districts"

Download 2024 as CSV

curl "https://georgiacivicdata.org/api/v1/education/direct_certification?year=2024&format=csv"

Notes & limitations

NULL handling

Zero is a real, reported value.

Limitations

Three detail levels (school, district, state) in one fact table, split by parquet filename; school_code is NULL on district/state rows and district_code is NULL on state rows. The statewide aggregate exists only for 2022-2024; earlier years publish no state row and pre-2020 years lack the counts needed to reconstruct one. The underlying counts (num_direct_cert_students, num_k12_students) are published only from FY2020 and are NULL before that. School-level rows and district-level rows come from two independent GOSA downloads whose K-12 bases need not reconcile exactly, so school rows are NOT guaranteed to sum to their district row. Two methodology breaks limit year-over-year comparison: FY2017 rates EXCLUDE foster students (FY2018+ include them), and FY2024 adds the Medicaid DC-M category, roughly doubling certified counts — comparisons crossing 2016->2017, 2017->2018, or 2023->2024 are not apples-to-apples. The State Schools representation changes across eras: three individual 7-digit rows (7991893-7991895) through 2019, one combined 799 row from 2020. No suppression exists in this topic — NULL never means suppressed.