President to Propose Expansion of the Summer Lunch Program

More school children in Franklin and Hart Counties who need it could benefit from a plan by President Barak Obama to expand the summer lunch program.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the President’s FY2017 Budget will invest $12 billion over ten years to reduce child hunger during the summer through a permanent Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children (Summer EBT).

The program, if approved by Congress, would provide supplemental food benefits during the summer months for all families with children eligible for free and reduced price school meals.

According to the USDA, during the academic year, school meals help ensure consistent and adequate access to nutritious food for the nearly 22 million low-income children who receive free and reduced price school meals.

However, they say only a fraction of these children receive free and reduced price meals when school is out of session. As a result, low-income children are at higher risk of food insecurity and poor nutrition during the summer.

Summer EBT, provides benefits on an electronic debit card that can only be used for food at the grocery store, fills the food budget gap in the summer; rigorous evaluations of USDA pilots of Summer EBT programs have found that they can significantly reduce food insecurity among children and improve their diet.

The USDA plans to announce a new initiative to increase access to school meals for low-income children through a project that will allow interested State agencies that administer the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to use Medicaid data to certify students for free and reduced priced lunches.

According to the USDA, the initiative will link eligible children to nutritious school meals with less paperwork for the State, schools and families alike.

Interested states are invited to submit applications and USDA expects to approve approximately five States to begin the demonstrations during the upcoming school year (2016-2017), with additional states implementing the pilot in the subsequent years. USDA is committed to helping 20 States take up this pilot and begin implementing direct certification using Medicaid data over the next three school years.