Every child deserves year-round access to nutritious food, but in Kentucky, one in five kids don’t eat enough to live a healthy life, especially in the summer months when free school meals aren’t available. To help address that, Kentucky recently rolled out a new federal initiative, the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer (Summer EBT) program, to reduce child food insecurity when the school year ends.
According to new data from the Department of Community Based Services (DCBS), Summer EBT provided grocery money for nearly 395,600 Kentucky kids this past summer, or approximately 68% of eligible students. The state is currently in the process of preparing for Summer EBT in 2025, and more should be done to ensure eligible kids aren’t left out and federal funds aren’t left on the table.
Kentucky is one of the states that opted to participate in Summer EBT its first year
Summer EBT became a nationally available federal program through the 2022 budget. In the summer of 2024, Kentucky and the 38 other states that opted into the program began issuing $120 in grocery money to children who qualify based on free-and-reduced-price lunch status or household income. The federal government funds the benefits and participating states pay half of the cost to administer the program.
Providing families with grocery money during summer break to make up for the loss of school meals is a proven approach to address the spike in child hunger that occurs every year at this time. During the peak of the pandemic, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) implemented Pandemic EBT (PEBT) to provide families with money to pay for groceries when schools were closed, which reduced household food insufficiency by 39%. Prior to Pandemic EBT, the USDA operated a Summer EBT pilot program for a decade. It was shown to reduce the number of households with food insecure children by one-third in states included in the program.
Additionally, PEBT and Summer EBT have been shown to be important local economic drivers by following a similar EBT model as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which generates between $1.50 and $1.80 in economic stimulus during downturns.
More than 180,400 eligible students did not receive Summer EBT this year
While it’s positive that a majority of eligible kids participated in the Summer EBT program this year, the vast majority received it automatically. Only a small share who had to apply actually did so. In planning for next year, the state should take steps to ensure more kids who qualify receive the benefit next year.
About 375,118 of the 395,568 Kentucky students who received Summer EBT were participating in another program like SNAP, Kentucky Transition Assistance Program (KTAP), Kinship Care and/or certain aspects of the Medicaid program, which meant they automatically qualified for, and were issued, Summer EBT this year.
But the other 204,882 eligible students – kids that participated in free or reduced meals during the 2024 school year or who were income eligible – had to fill out an application for Summer EBT. Only 20,522 had an approved application and 11,226 submitted an application that was denied. That means only about 15% of the qualifying students applied, meaning about 180,432 students didn’t receive the grocery money they qualified to receive. That is about $21.7 million in federal funds to reduce child hunger, which also supports local economies, that Kentucky missed out on.
Additionally, even for the kids who had to apply but ultimately did receive Summer EBT, in many cases there were long delays to verify their eligibility in order to issue the funds. Once the state received these applications, a student’s eligibility had to be verified using data submitted by each school district. While some school districts provided the data quickly, others did not verify eligibility until after summer ended.
Kentucky’s Summer EBT plan for 2025 should reduce barriers for eligible students
State Summer EBT plans are being prepared now for 2025. As Kentucky prepares its own, the state should learn from this year’s implementation and ensure no kid goes needlessly hungry next summer.
While Kentucky required eligible students to apply and individual school systems to submit verification data, other states’ Departments of Education, including our neighbors in Ohio, West Virginia and Tennessee, shared this data upfront to automatically issue benefits to eligible students without requiring them to apply. Next year, Kentucky should take this route instead and ensure more eligible students receive much-needed food during the summer.
For questions about your Summer EBT benefits, call DCBS at 855-306-8959. More information can be found on the DCBS website https://www.chfs.ky.gov/agencies/dcbs/dfs/Pages/SEBT.aspx .
