Every child needs and deserves healthy meals throughout the year. But in recent years, 94% of Alabama’s children who received free or reduced-price school meals during the school year did not have access to them over the summer.

The Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) program built off more than a decade of successful pilot programs, and it had a proven track record of reducing food insecurity and supporting healthy diets for children. Congress recently replaced P-EBT with a new Summer EBT program, but Alabama has not yet provided the required state match for the administration of the new program. 

We need Sen. Arthur Orr, chair of the Senate education budget committee, to include $15 million from the Education Trust Fund for the Summer EBT food program to help prevent children from going hungry next summer.

Legislators are actively working on the fiscal year 2025 budgets, so now is an important time to elevate Summer EBT as a budget priority. Tell Sen. Orr to secure funding for Summer EBT and keep kids fed!

Food insecurity among children in Alabama is disproportionately high, with one in four children living in food-insecure households. This is especially common in households of color, who often face food apartheid, the term for systemic and infrastructural limits to food access based on demographic factors such as race, class ethnicity and gender.

Alabama needs to seize this opportunity to keep kids fed. Tell Sen. Orr to secure funding for Summer EBT and keep kids fed!