Free lunch for all students ending as EBT funds go up

Free school lunches for all of Lewis County's K-12 students won't be provided after June 30, except for those who got free lunches before the coronavirus pandemic.

Expiration of that economic recovery program was confirmed locally last week. That came just before a Tennessee Senate committee recommended a state budget increase for federally funded electronic benefit transfer cards to help students getting subsidized school lunches.

During committee discussion, Sen. Joey Hensley sought clarification about funds that appeared to be in danger of being lost if not spent.

"So that's actually going back and paying people for it when they didn't eat it last summer?" the Hohenwald Republican said, reaching for better insight on free lunches. "Certainly they lost meals, but I don't really see how that helps paying them now, when they needed the meals last year."

State Department of Children's Services (DCS) leaders replied explaining that during the quarantine and school shutdowns, children weren't eating breakfast and/or lunch at school.

"So we created the PEBT [Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer] program, a collaboration between DHS and our [Tennessee's] Department of Education to identify children eligible for free or reduced lunches and then move meals directly to them," Human Services Department Commissioner Clarence Carter said.

Carter's deputy reported during the March 9 committee meeting that "to date" nearly $898 million had been spent through PEBT cards, indicating a projected cost for such spending at $1.6 billion to feed students in the 2022-23 fiscal year.

"I think every additional expenditure by the federal government is somehow related to the pandemic," Carter said. The money is for "families struggling to put food on the table."

Saturday, Hensley explained, DHS is "going back and paying these people for meals from a year ago. They [DHS leaders] say, 'Replace these meals they missed because they didn't go to school [during the pandemic]. They'd have gotten a meal at school, so we're going to give them $7 a day for all these days.'

"It's obviously not replacing a meal they missed a year ago," Hensley said, acknowledging it's federal money passed through the state to county school nutrition programs. Since it's not state or local tax revenue, he said, few people object to adjusting the state budget to accommodate an influx of federal money.

Meanwhile, county school leaders across the state are realizing that federal money will no longer be available to school nutrition programs to counteract food insecurity from lost wages during the coronavirus pandemic quarantine and business shut downs. That pandemic relief ends July 1. Since March 2020, America's school cafeteria leaders exercised the Seamless Summer Option funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It let schools feed all students at no charge, regardless of eligibility. The USDA is "returning to pre-pandemic operations," one official said. Now, students with parents who are financially able to pay will be charged full price for breakfast and lunch at school.

U.S. Rep. Mark Green's press secretary, Rebecca Galfano, recognized that Congress probably won't extend the program that made school lunches free to all students.

"The pandemic relief, which allowed schools to provide free school lunch to all students, is scheduled to end in June," Galfano said. "It would go back to the traditional free and reduced lunch program that schools had before COVID.

"I haven't seen anything regarding extensions on this," Galfano said, having seen a Washington Post story headlined: "Pandemic expansion of school lunch program appears slated to end."