More than four months after Gov. Kim Reynolds announced she would not permit Iowa families who receive federal food assistance from receiving an extra $40 per child a month in benefits over three months to help cover the increased cost of feeding children who won’t be eating lunches or breakfast at school during summer break. On Wednesday, Reynolds announced her own plan to address summertime increase in the financial burden food-insecure families face.
“Providing young Iowans with access to free, nutritious meals in their communities during the summer months has always been a priority,” the governor said in a statement.
The governor said she will allocate $900,000 for a new grant program that will supplement two existing programs that distribute meals at mostly school-based sites over the summer break. That amount is 3.1 percent of the estimated $29 million Iowa families would have received directly through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children program.
“While I appreciate the governor finally doing something for hungry children in our state, the competitive grant program announced today amounts to crumbs for Iowa kids,” Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, a Democrat from West Des Moines, said in a statement following the governor’s announcement.
“Gov. Reynolds could have accepted $29 million in federal food assistance that would’ve reached 240,000 children in every corner of the state. The $900,000 state program she announced today is tiny in comparison — and forces Iowa communities to compete for a sliver of that little pie. That’s not enough to meet the real needs facing our state. And it doesn’t make up for her decision to let Iowa kids go hungry.”
The governor’s new Summer Meal Program Expansion Grant will provide funds to schools and other institutions rather than families.
“Qualifying Iowa schools participating in the National School Lunch Program or School Breakfast Program may apply as either a Summer Food Service Program or Seamless Summer Option sponsor,” according to the statement issued by the governor’s office on Wednesday. “Private nonprofit organizations, community and faith-based organizations, higher education institutions and local government agencies are eligible to participate as a sponsor for the Summer Food Service Program.”
The Summer Food Service Program and Seamless Summer Option are administered jointly by the state and the USDA, with administrative costs being split between the two. The programs fund meals and snacks provided at specific designated sites, like schools.
A competitive grant program to feed hungry kids?
Gov. Reynolds bringing her own version of the Hunger Games to Iowa.
Incredibly disappointing. #iagov https://t.co/fzRZH2Xqen
— Stacey Walker (@swalker06) April 10, 2024
The state would also have to provide half of the administrative costs for the Summer EBT for Children program the governor rejected, but the federal government would cover all the costs for the three months of increased benefits, which would have been added directly to a SNAP recipient’s EBT card. The program is an outgrowth of the expanded food assistance provided by the federal government to families who qualify for free or reduced-price school meals during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the nonprofit Iowa Hunger Coalition, 240,000 children in the state would receive help through Summer EBT for Children. In contrast, last year the average number of children who attended one of the summer meal sites at which the governor’s new grant program is directed on a daily basis was 21,557.
“While we certainly welcome the new grant program to expand summer meal sites, we also recognize that barriers will remain for families to access those sites. Summer EBT is meant to complement, not replace, summer feeding sites,” Luke Elzinga, board chair of the Iowa Hunger Coalition, said.
Iowa is one of 14 Republican-led states — along with Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming — that have rejected the increased federal food assistance. Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska, also a Republican, initially rejected the program as well, but in February Pillen announced he had reconsidered and Nebraska would participate in Summer EBT for Children.
“I don’t believe in welfare,” Pillen said last November when he originally rejected participation in the federal program.
But in a speech in February, Pillen explained why he had changed his mind. The governor said it was listening to a group of food-insecure young people describe the difficulties they’ve had accessing help from the sort of site-specific programs that Reynolds favors.
“They talked about being hungry. And they talked about the summer USDA program and, depending upon access, when they’d get a sack of food,” Pillen said. “And from my seat, what I saw there, we have to do better in Nebraska.”
When Reynolds announced on Dec. 22 that she was rejecting state participation in Summer EBT for Children, she said, “Federal COVID-era cash benefit programs are not sustainable and don’t provide long-term solutions for the issues impacting children and families. An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.”
Besides ignoring the fact EBT helps recipients better afford fresh, nutritious food (and avoid malnutrition, which may or may not correlate with obesity) the governor’s announcement in December came two weeks after the Food Bank of Iowa said it and its partners in 55 counties had seen record demands for their services over the previous 19 months.
“Today, 36 percent of hardworking Iowa families and many folks living on fixed incomes do not make enough money to cover the cost of basic needs,” Food Bank of Iowa CEO Michelle Book said in a Dec. 7 statement. “This is a social injustice we can no longer ignore.”
Applications to receive one of Reynolds’ new Summer Meal Program Expansion Grants must be received by the Iowa Department of Education by May 7. According to the governor’s office, the $900,000 for the grants comes from the federal government. The money is part of the funding Iowa received through the American Rescue Plan Act, which President Biden signed into law in 2021.