Roughly 21 million children across the country face a nutritional gap every summer when school cafeterias close, and the federal government is sending $27.3 million in grocery assistance to help close it.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture posted the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer grant on April 2, timed to give states enough runway to prepare before summer break begins. The funds load directly onto existing EBT cards, giving families $40 per eligible child per month, or about $120 over the course of the summer, to spend at grocery stores. Children qualify if their household income is at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty line, the same threshold used for free or reduced-price school meals.
The program addresses a decades-old problem: during the school year, roughly 30 million children eat federally subsidized meals daily, but USDA data has long shown that only about one in seven of those kids access summer meal programs, which require traveling to a physical site. Pilot programs launched around 2011 tested whether grocery cards would work better. The evidence was striking: evaluations found the demonstrations cut very low food security among children by roughly one-third, some of the strongest results in federal nutrition policy.
Congress made Summer EBT permanent in late 2022, and USDA rolled it out nationally for the first time in summer 2024. That first year, more than 12 million children in participating states received benefits, though 13 states initially declined to join, with some governors citing administrative costs or opposition to expanding federal food programs. Several of those states reversed course by the second year under pressure from constituents and anti-hunger advocates.
The grant record does not specify which state or territory is receiving this particular $27.3 million, a gap that limits the local picture. What is known is that the April timing positions the funds for summer 2026 operations, the program's second full year at national scale.
The program's future is not certain. Created under a Democratic-controlled Congress and signed by President Biden, Summer EBT now operates under a federal administration that has signaled interest in tightening eligibility for nutrition programs and cutting USDA spending. Farm Bill reauthorization, where nutrition program funding is a central fight, looms as the next major test of whether the program survives intact.
