LOUISIANA – Families of nearly 260,000 students in Louisiana will soon receive a new debit card pre-filled with funds for groceries this summer, following the reauthorization of a federal program aimed at helping kids who couldn’t access free or reduced-price meals in their schools during the pandemic.
Some students will be eligible for up to $1,200 from the Pandemic EBT, or P-EBT program, depending on how many months they learned from home during the 2020-21 school year.
The cards should go out in the mail starting in June, according to Louisiana’s Department of Child and Family Services.
Officials said eligible students who learned on a combined schedule of remote and in-person learning will receive $48.23 for every month they were in hybrid learning. Eligible students who attended virtually will receive $120.71 per month. Benefits will be retroactive to Aug. 1, 2020, to cover the full 2020-21 school year.
Shavana Howard, the assistant secretary for DCFS, said that families would be receiving their cards even if they took advantage of grab-and-go meals provided by schools or school districts.
The benefits follow a year of difficulties for kids and families. Job losses and school disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic fell particularly hard on lower-income families. The state’s unemployment rate is at around 7%, and with school ending for the year, many families will continue to struggle.
“It speaks to the level of support and level of help people really need in order to meet their daily needs,” Howard said of the P-EBT and other food service programs. “That’s what our programs are here for.”
This is the second wave of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service benefit, one of several federal relief efforts approved by Congress to soften the economic blow from COVID-19.
More than 40 states, along with the District of Columbia, were approved for P-EBT this year. Last year, during the first round, Louisiana distributed more than $137.1 million in P-EBT benefits to 284,259 families and their children.
This year the program is operating a little bit differently. Howard said fewer students will be eligible for full benefits because many went back to in-person learning, whereas last year all schools in the state closed their doors in March.
Last year, nearly 200,000 who were eligible didn’t apply, officials said. This year, the state made changes to allow school districts to directly report who was eligible so families could bypass the application process.
Approximately 699,000 students — or 87% of all students across the state — receive free or reduced lunch, according to the Louisiana Department of Education. That includes some districts considered to be so high-poverty all students are allowed to get them.
In East Baton Rouge Parish schools, the 12,500 students who are currently learning virtually — almost a third of all students in the district — are eligible for full benefits. In addition, all 40,000-plus children in the school district are eligible for benefits for August when the Baton Rouge public schools operated virtual-only.
The parish school system attempted a variety of ways to “fill in the gap when kids are at home,” according to Nadine Mann, director of the district’s child nutrition program, including with curbside meal pickups and home deliveries via the group Focus Foods.
In New Orleans, where about 85% are economically disadvantaged, the district’s nearly 45,000 students in its network of charter school started the year remotely. About 40% continued to learn from home through the first semester.
NOLA Public Schools wasn’t able to provide more recent data on the number of qualifying students learning remotely or on hybrid schedules.
