New Jersey families were set to receive nearly $ 564 million this school year to save their children from starvation. But when the class ends, the state still hasn’t distributed most of the emergency money for food.
In a state where more than one in seven children is expected to face food insecurity this year, the bureaucratic delay has resulted in some children not getting enough to eat.
Jameeleh Benson, who lost her job at a Popeyes chicken restaurant shortly after the pandemic started, has five children in the Newark school system. With all but one studying remotely since last spring, the kids have missed the free daily meals they would normally get at school. Benson reached out to family members and pantries, but it wasn’t enough: for many days, their children had to skip breakfast or lunch, she said.
“Never in a million years have we struggled with COVID as we have in the past few months,” she said.
A government aid program called Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) should be a lifeline for families like Benson’s. It was launched last spring and gives parents food allowance to make up for school meals that the children missed while studying from home.
In September, when most of the school buildings were still closed, Congress extended the program to that school year. It also expanded the program to include children in childcare who were not eligible for the first round of benefits.
In New Jersey, families should receive approximately $ 123 per month for each eligible child under the age of 6 and school-age children who have been completely isolated. Each child who attended school part-time in person is charged approximately $ 61 per month. (To be eligible, families of children under the age of 6 were required to receive grocery stamps; school-age children are eligible if they usually receive free or discounted school meals.)
But by the end of the school year, New Jersey has only just begun distributing lunch money to the parents of eligible preschoolers for the past nine months. The benefits for these roughly 105,000 children should be distributed by June 25, officials said.
The families of more than 840,000 school-age children have not yet received a single dollar of the emergency aid they are entitled to from October last year. That money could have filled countless cupboards and fridges in homes where children had to study remotely this school year.
Benson should have been given about $ 5,340 to buy groceries for her family. Without this help to supplement her grocery stamps, she has relied on pantries to stock up on canned foods and vegetables for her children.
“I have to go there to make ends meet,” she said. “That keeps something on the plate.”
New Jersey also sent the pandemic EBT money late last year.
A spokesman for the state’s Department of Human Services, which manages the benefit program, said the agency is still working with school districts to identify students who are eligible for meal allowance this school year. The funds are expected to be issued “later this summer”.
The delay is due in part to the Trump administration, which has been slow to introduce the new benefit program over the past year. But New Jersey also has a certain responsibility.
Several states, including Massachusetts and Rhode Island, submitted plans to the US Department of Agriculture in December to spend the food money on families with school-age children. However, it took other states much longer to finalize their plans, which must be approved before the benefits can be paid out. New Jersey didn’t get its plan approved until April.
Now the state Department of Human Services is working hard to get the detailed information it needs from school districts to calculate how much money families should receive. For their part, districts have had to determine each month since October whether each eligible student has been completely out of the way or on a hybrid schedule. (Families have already received benefits for the month of September 2020.)
“It’s a tough job for school districts to figure out which kids to send to DHS,” said Nancy Parello, communications director for Hunger Free New Jersey, an advocacy group that helped the state get the P-EBT program up and running. “In an ideal world, these benefits are already in the hands of the families who need them.”
Mistakes at every step of the process can cost insolvent families hundreds of dollars.
In Newark, Neoshi Baker never received the first round of emergency benefits for her two children who attend Ridge Street School and received a free lunch before the pandemic. Eventually, Baker was told that her children were ineligible for failing to submit an income statement form, which she claims she never received. She contacted school, county and state officials to fix the problem, she said, but got stuck.
“I’ve been sending e-mails, letters, phone calls – everything humanly possible – and nobody’s going to help me,” she said. “Now my children are suffering.”
A district spokesman did not respond to questions about this article.
Meanwhile, states face another hurdle. When Congress extended the food aid program for that school year, it set the end date to September 2021. As a result, states will need to figure out how to cash out the benefits this summer, even if they make hasty retrospective payments.
So far, only 12 states have approved distribution plans for this summer. New Jersey is not one of them.
