Low-income San Diego County families with school-aged children will be able to get at least $40 each month to pay for food this summer under a new federal program.
Millions of California school children participate in federal school breakfast and lunch programs during the school year, but when school is out for the summer, many lose access to them and risk going hungry.
The new program — known as Summer Electronics Benefits Transfer, or Summer EBT — will give families $40 each summer month per eligible child to buy groceries, similar to supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits, formerly known as food stamps. More than 3.8 million California children are expected to be eligible.
California has already opted in, as have more than two dozen other states, territories and tribal nations. Others have until Monday to tell the federal government if they plan to. Some Republican-led states have said they won’t participate, with one governor citing childhood obesity.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it tested the program as a demonstration project over years and notes that a study of a similar pandemic-era program showed it reduced the number of children going hungry by about a third.
The federal government will cover the entire cost of the benefits and half of the administrative costs; states are expected to kick in the other half.
The new, permanent program, created by Congress last year, replaces a pandemic-era one meant to compensate low-income families for the on-campus meals their kids missed while schools were closed. But many families never received or used those cards.
Under summer EBT, families with kids who qualify for free or reduced-price school meals can get $40 per month per child while school is out, in the form of EBT debt cards they can use at grocery stores, farmers’ markets and more.
Children must be individually determined to be eligible for free or reduced-price school meals. That’s different from pandemic EBT, which was also available to families who weren’t low-income but whose children attended schools that provided universal free meals through a federal program.
Summer EBT does not replace other existing summer meal programs; it supplements them. The USDA encourages family to participate in all programs available to them. More information is available here: https://www.fns.usda.gov/sfsp/seamless-summer-and-other-options-schools
