Arkansas will participate in a federal program providing food assistance for children during summer break from school this year, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced Tuesday.
Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer, or Summer EBT, will provide $120 in food benefits for each Arkansas child eligible for the National School Lunch Program, a U.S. Department of Agriculture service that provides free or reduced-price meals for low-income children.
The new program will launch this summer after Congress approved it as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, modeling Summer EBT after a similar program enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“Making sure no Arkansan goes hungry, especially children, is a top concern for my administration,” Sanders said in a press release. “We are leveraging every resource at our disposal to fight this crisis, and Summer EBT promises to be an important new tool to give Arkansas children the food and nutrition they need.”
The program “is going to be tremendous for Arkansas kids and their families,” Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance CEO Kathy Webb said Wednesday.
“Every time we’ve met, childhood hunger has been something that the governor and I have talked about, and I’m really, really pleased that she’s doing this,” said Webb, who is also a member of the Little Rock Board of Directors.
Other Republican governors have declined to participate in Summer EBT as Monday’s deadline to apply passed. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen said he and other state officials “don’t believe in welfare,” and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said the program “does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.”
Oklahoma will not participate in Summer EBT, and Gov. Kevin Stitt’s office cited uncertainty about how the federal government would administer the program. Meanwhile, Missouri has opted in, though officials noted in their letter of intent to participate that a “lack of final guidance” from the federal government “poses potential unforeseen challenges to the implementation” of the program.
As of September, U.S. Census data showed that 22% of Arkansas children live in poverty, the sixth-highest rate in the nation, according to Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.
Qualifications for the National School Lunch Program range from $36,482 for a two-person household to $93,536 for an eight-person household in Arkansas.
“No child should ever go hungry,” Human Services Secretary Kristi Putnam said in the press release. “Summer EBT will allow us to further help combat food insecurity across Arkansas by providing critical resources for eligible families to provide much needed nutritious food for their children, even when school is out.”
The Arkansas Department of Education will work with the Department of Human Services to form a plan to administer the program, according to the press release.
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‘A big difference’
U.S. Sen. John Boozman, R-Arkansas, played a role in ensuring Summer EBT was part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, Webb said.
Boozman said in the press release that he and his colleagues in Congress worked on “modernizing the outdated summer meals program with the help of Natural State nutrition advocates to ensure it serves more children in need by offering states multiple options,” including Summer EBT.
The program is not the only one born from pandemic-era adaptations to meet schoolchildren’s nutritional needs. School districts nationwide began delivering meals to children at their homes while schools were closed in 2020, and during the summer, schools allowed families to pick up meals for children.
The latter program became the Non-Congregate Summer Meal Service for rural areas, an effort Boozman also championed and was launched last year.
In addition to the two summer meal programs, Arkansas took “a huge step in the right direction” by passing Act 656 of 2023, eliminating reduced-price copayments for school breakfasts and lunches, Webb said.
“While some people think the copay isn’t that much, I know from talking to school nutrition directors [that for] a lot of Arkansas families, many of whom are holding down one or two jobs, $10 or $20 really makes a big difference,” she said.
The Hunger Alliance’s advocacy work focuses not only on legislative efforts to relieve poverty but also on removing red tape and improving public awareness of aid programs, such as Women, Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition benefits, Webb said.
“It’s not always that we have to pass a bill,” she said. “Sometimes it’s looking at the process and seeing if there’s something we could change to help participation.”
