T-R PHOTO BY LANA BRADSTREAM Luke Elzinga with the Des Moines Area Religious Council tells the Community Food Access Team about the benefits of the federal summer SNAP program. He is encouraging organizations to contact the governor to encourage enrollment in the program this year.

Organizations are encouraged to contact Gov. Kim Reynolds about enrolling Iowa in the Summer EBT program.

Luke Elzinga, the chair of the Iowa Hunger Coalition board and policy and advocacy manager for the Des Moines Area Religious Council, brought local hunger statistics to the Community Food Access Team meeting in Marshalltown on Tuesday.

He said the Summer EBT program was created by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2022. There are some differences from the COVID-19 EBT program.

“The pandemic program also helped younger children, and the summer is only for school-aged children,” Elzinga said.

Another difference between the two programs is only children who qualify for free and reduced lunches would be eligible for the summer version. The summer program would provide 245,000 children in Iowa with $120 in nutrition during the three months when they are not in school.

“Iowa did not participate in 2024,” he said. “We’re working on trying to encourage the governor to submit a notice of intent to USDA so Iowa can participate in 2025.”

Elzinga said they have crafted a letter for organizations to sign asking the governor to submit the notice of intent by Jan. 1.

“That is the mechanism to get Iowa participating in summer EBT,” he said. “We already have almost 60 organizations to sign on and the deadline is next Friday. If you’re a church or a nonprofit or even this group collectively wanted to sign on, we’re really putting this out for any organization, business, faith community, city council, county governments to sign on and show this has a lot of support across the state.”

Displaying October statistics on a screen, Elzinga showed, 10 percent of the Marshall County population, or 4,076 people, are enrolled in EBT. Twelve percent are eligible for the benefit but are not enrolled. The average monthly benefit of a household receiving EBT is $356. The total benefit received in the county is $667,121 with an economic impact of more than $1 million.

“When folks have more money to spend on groceries, it helps stimulate the local economy and helps free up the budget for household goods they need but can’t purchase – things like toilet paper, diapers, and that has an economic stimulus effect, too,” he said.

Elzinga also presented public school district statistics. For the Marshalltown Community School District, there were 4,881 kids enrolled during the 2023-24 school year. Of those, 3,737, or 76 percent, were eligible for the summer EBT program. The total benefits would be $448,440 with an economic impact of $690,598. He told meeting attendees the numbers are probably larger, as only data from public schools is used, not the private schools.

“There are private schools that participate in the national school lunch program and if children are income-eligible they can,” Elzinga said.

Julie Hitchins, executive director of the Community Foundation of Marshall County, asked why the state would not sign up for the summer EBT program. Elzinga told her the reason the state gave is it promotes childhood obesity as the people using the program would only buy junk food.

“We have a lot of evidence that shows when you give parents and families a little bit of extra money, they are able to make healthier decisions,” he said. “There is evidence contrary to that.”

Elzinga said there has been speculation, and he does not think it is the reason, is the state’s share in the cost of the summer program would be 50 percent of the administration cost, which equals $2.2 million. He said there are noncompetitive USDA grants for states which would reduce Iowa’s cost to $1.1 million. The deadline for that grant is Jan. 1.

“It could cost the state $1.1 million to bring in $29 million in federal benefits for our children,” Elzinga said. “I think [the governor] has made it clear they would rather this would be a block grant so they could fund existing summer feeding programs. It’s just not how it works. It is specifically an EBT program. It’s not meant to complement summer feeding sites. It’s not meant to replace them. Half of the school districts in the state of Iowa do not have summer feeding sites.”

Marshall County ISU Extension Director Amy Pieper said in Marshall County, while Marshalltown has feeding sites for children, the East and West Marshall school districts do not. One reason is a lack of transportation.

“Mom can go to Fareway and get food to have at home for her kids to eat lunch,” she said. “She might not be able to get them to the elementary school to eat lunch.”

Elzinga said the summer program is a winning, “no-brainer” policy solution.

“I cannot think of a more bipartisan policy than feeding hungry kids in the summer,” he said.

SIGNING THE LETTER

Organizations, churches and businesses can go to iowahungercoalition.org/summer-ebt to read and sign the letter which will be sent to Reynolds. The deadline to sign is Dec. 13 at 5 p.m.

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Contact Lana Bradstream

at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or

lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.