The Wolf Administration has received approval from the Food and Nutrition Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to issue more than $1 billion in federally-funded benefits to the families of nearly 1 million Pennsylvania children who have attended school remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic and who otherwise would have had access to free-and-reduced-price meals during the 2020-21 school year. This program, known as Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT), will help families cover the cost of breakfasts and lunches their children would have been eligible to receive for free or at reduced price through the National School Lunch Program.

Originally created through the Families First Coronavirus Response Act to help families feed their children during the spring of 2020 when schools initially closed, the P-EBT program was re-authorized to cover the entire 2020-21 school year. The Pennsylvania departments of Human Services and Education collaborated on the development of the commonwealth’s P-EBT plan and received approval to move forward from the federal government this week.

“The pandemic caused hardships for Pennsylvania families that nobody could have anticipated or planned for,” DHS Secretary Teresa Miller said. “The P-EBT program provides needed relief to many families with school-age children whose expenses unexpectedly increased at the same time that so many family incomes unexpectedly decreased.”

Pennsylvania will distribute the equivalent of about $84 million per month to the families of about 928,000 children – for a total distribution of about $1 billion. For more information, click here.