HARRISBURG – The state departments of Human Services and Education announced Pennsylvania will participate in Summer EBT, a new federal program that gives kids access to nutritious meals during the summer months, when many kids go hungry without school-provided meals.
The benefits will come in the form of pre-loaded cards that families can use to purchase groceries. Pennsylvania will issue its Summer EBT benefits as a single $120 issuance — $40 for June, July and August — for each eligible child, with all benefits issued by Sept. 30.
The School Nutrition Association of Pennsylvania (SNAPA) today praised Gov. Josh Shapiro for enlisting Pennsylvania in a new federal program that provides hundreds of millions of dollars for summer food aid for children.
School-age children who qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or the National School Lunch Program will qualify automatically.
The summer months can be a strain for families with children fighting food insecurity. Many kids go hungry without school-provided meals, and families may struggle even more to make ends meet to pick up the added costs of summer meals.
“This program will have enormous value in closing the summer hunger gap when kids are on break and not getting nutritious school meals,” said Kristan Delle, SNAPA secretary/treasurer of the School Nutrition Association of Pennsylvania.
One in eight kids goes hungry every day in Pennsylvania. In rural areas, as many as one in five kids experience hunger.
The summer food program was approved as part of a bipartisan federal budget agreement in 2022. The benefits are federally funded, and administration of the program is split evenly between federal and state governments.
SNAPA is a member of the School Meals for All coalition — Universal School Meals PA — a broad coalition of anti-hunger groups, child nutrition programs, school districts and school leadership organizations, childhood health and education advocates and others.
The coalition encourages lawmakers to take the next step in combating child food insecurity by expanding the universal school breakfast program to include universal school lunch.
Universal School Meals PA recently released the results of a statewide public opinion poll it commissioned that found eight in 10 Pennsylvania voters support expanding the state’s existing no-cost breakfast to include lunch for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
Support for the initiative is broad-based and bipartisan among those who identify as Republican (78%), Democrat (86%), and Independent or unaffiliated (82%), and posts strong majorities in all key subgroups, including people who voted for Joe Biden (84%) and Donald Trump (82%) in 2020, as well as self-identified conservatives (81%), moderates (83%) and liberal or progressive voters (84%).
For more information about the poll, visit www.UniversalSchoolMealsPA.com. For more information about SNAPA, visit https://snapa.org/mealsforall.
