Deadline looming for program to reduce child hunger

Texas missed out on $450 million in federal food aid for children last year, but Texas lawmakers have until March 1 to keep that from happening this summer.

The Summer Electronic Benefit Card program is a U.S. Department of Agriculture program allowing low-income families with school-aged children to receive additional benefits when schools are on summer break. In Texas, the program could benefit 3.7 million children.

The program provides funds for each eligible child on an electronic benefit card that families can use like a debit card to buy groceries. Benefits are federally funded, and administrative costs are shared on an equal basis by state and federal agencies.

The Texas Legislature has until March 1 to authorize budget funds requested by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission for additional personnel and computer support to implement the summer program this year.

Some uncertainty remains, said Jeremy Everett, founding executive director of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty.

“HHSC is understaffed right now. They have not caught up with the pandemic staffing losses,” Everett said.

Even if additional funds are allocated to the commission, hiring staff, building out a new program in three months, and getting school-aged children enrolled in it will be challenging, he noted.

Furthermore, major cuts to multiple federal programs might affect the program at the national level—or not.

“Fortunately, USDA has not been one of the targets of any significant budget cuts,” Everett said. “Their programs are not currently being focused on, and the programs that directly affect the individual are not supposed to be touched in any federal funding freeze.”

At the same time, he noted, USDA at some point likely will be called on to cut some personnel to streamline their agency.

Significant return on investment

“But here’s what we do know. We know Texas right now is the second-hungriest state in the country. We know that there’s a high majority of children in our public schools who are on—or eligible to be on—the free or reduced lunch program,” Everett said.

“We know that hungry children can’t learn. We know that food insecurity is directly tied to diet-related disease and all kinds of health impacts like asthma and depression. We know that food insecurity is not experienced in a vacuum—that it is typically the same household that is experiencing the weight of a number of our broken social systems.”

One child in four in Texas experiences hunger, and child hunger historically has spiked in the summer months when students lose access to free or reduced meals at school.

However, the Summer Emergency Food Program—along with summer meal sites at churches and other locations in urban and suburban areas and home-delivered meals in rural areas—offer “a pathway” to help eliminate child hunger, he noted.

“You’re not going to end child hunger with one approach. Our contexts are too diverse in Texas. So, now we finally have three different ways to address child hunger in the summer. In my opinion, let’s use all three of them, and use them to their fullest capacity,” Everett said. “Those are the kids who need us to come alongside them the most.”

The Summer Electronic Benefit Card program and increased household access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program not only meet the essential nutritional needs of children, but also provide economic benefits to communities, to farmers and ranchers, and to everyone involved in the food supply chain, he added.

Texas is one of only 11 states currently not enrolled in the Summer Electronic Benefit Card program.

“When it comes to programs like Summer EBT, if you’re leaving $450 million on the table in resources that could benefit approximately 3.7 million kids and that would ultimately have an economic impact of $1.3 billion for the state economy, that’s huge,” Everett said.

“That’s a no-brainer. That’s a marginal investment on the state’s part to get a significant return—first and foremost in food security for children and secondarily in the economic impact it would have on our state.”