On Thursday, Gov. Kim Reynolds announced she is again refusing to allow Iowans to participate in a USDA program that provides millions of dollars in direct assistance to families with children to help cover the increased cost of food during summer months when kids aren’t in school.
“In Iowa, our focus is on the comprehensive well-being of this generation of young Iowans,” Iowa Department of Health and Human Services Director Kelly Garcia said in the written statement the governor’s office published on Thursday explaining Reynolds’ decision to reject the federal funds provided through the USDA’s Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children program. “Our solutions to promote healthy behaviors and well-balanced, nutritious diets for children must be comprehensive and holistic.”
Last December, Reynolds announced Iowa would not participate in this year’s Summer EBT for Children program. The program provides an extra $40 a month per child during the three months of school vacation to families whose kids qualify for free or reduced price meals at school. Food insecurity among school-age children spikes during summer months when they no longer have regular access to meals at school.
The USDA estimated the Summer EBT program would have provided approximately $29 million to Iowa families in 2024, with the temporarily increased benefit being automatically loaded onto their EBT cards. To qualify for the program, the state would have had to agree to cover half the cost of administering it, a standard requirement for federal benefit programs.
“An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic,” Reynolds said in a statement on Dec. 22, when she rejected the federal funding for 2024.
Four months later, the governor unveiled her substitute for the Summer EBT program, which she said would better serve the needs of food-insecure children in the state. It was a competitive grant program for “nonprofit organizations, community and faith-based organizations, higher education institutions and local government agencies” looking to expand existing summer meal sites for school-age kids. Reynolds allocated $900,000 for the grant program. That money came from the funds Iowa received through the American Rescue Plan Act, which President Biden signed into law in 2021.
“While I appreciate the governor finally doing something for hungry children in our state, the competitive grant program announced today amounts to crumbs for Iowa kids,” Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, a Democrat from West Des Moines, said at the time.
The $900,000 the governor allocated for the grant program amounted to 3.1 percent of the $29 million that would have been available through the Summer EBT program. According to the the nonprofit Iowa Hunger Coalition (IHC), the federal program would have covered 240,000 children in the state. In contrast, during the summer of 2023, the average number of children who ate on a daily basis at one of the summer meal sites the grant program was aimed at was 21,557. According to the governor’s office, the grant program resulted in the creation of a total of 61 new meal sites around the state this summer.
Like last year, Reynolds cited the importance of making sure children are getting nutritious meals in Thursday’s announcement. Even though she rejected the Summer EBT program, the governor still wants additional money from the USDA. Reynolds has submitted a waiver request to the USDA to use the federal funds to create her own summer meal program.
“Three monthly boxes with healthy foods would be available at distribution sites during the summer months,” according to the governor’s new release on the program. The boxes would be available to families whose children receive free or reduced price school meals that sign up for the program. There would be a home-delivery option for those who are unable to get to a site.
“Through this waiver request, the governor is asserting that the State knows better than its own families do about what their needs are,” the USDA said in a statement on Thursday.
The department said the Summer EBT program “is backed by a decade of demonstration projects and rigorous evaluation showing that it works to reduce child hunger and support healthier diets. It also provides families with the freedom to make their own decisions on what food is best for their unique needs.”
“It is not yet clear to us whether USDA even has the authority to grant the waiver requested by the state of Iowa,” IHC Board Chair Luke Elzinga said in a statement after the governor announced her waiver request. “What the state is proposing is not a small tweak to the Summer EBT program, it’s something entirely different. But something is better than nothing, especially when Iowa is facing a crisis of hunger and food insecurity.”
IHC Board Vice Chair Nicole McAlexander pointed to research showing participation in the Summer EBT program leads to better nutritional outcomes for children.
“While we appreciate the state’s willingness to explore alternative options, we remain steadfast in our belief that using Summer EBT to provide grocery benefits directly to families to purchase food at their local grocery store is the best decision Iowa could make,” McAlexander said. “The research is clear: when parents have more money available to purchase food, it empowers them to make more nutritious choices for their family. Providing additional funds directly to families would allow them to make the food choices that best fit their children’s cultural, religious, and other dietary needs.”
The Des Moines Area Religious Council, whose food pantry network has seen need for its services set new records this year, said in a statement it is “excited to see the state of Iowa is seeking solutions to summer hunger, a problem we know is not going away, and we look forward to working together at this critical juncture.”
“However, we acknowledge that this is just one more piece to the puzzle in addressing our neighbors’ needs. [The Summer EBT program] is a proven solution to helping families purchase healthy food that meets their household’s needs.”
Talking to reporters at the Iowa State Fair, Auditor Rob Sand, the only Democrat serving in statewide office, said rejecting Summer EBT amounts to “impoverishing the state of Iowa by not taking our fair share.”
“It’s not just food we’re taking out of the mouths of kids,” Sand said. “That’s also money that would go to people at farmers markets, it would go to Fareway, it would go to Hy-Vee. That’s just less money in the state of Iowa.”
Iowa is one of 14 Republican-led states — along with Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming — that have rejected increased federal food assistance through the Summer EBT program this year. Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska, also a Republican, initially rejected the program as well, but in February announced he had reconsidered and Nebraska would participate.
Pillen said the change came after he met with a group of food-insecure young people, who described the difficulties they’ve had accessing help from the sort of site-specific programs that Reynolds favors.
“They talked about being hungry. And they talked about the summer USDA program and, depending upon access, when they’d get a sack of food,” Pillen recalled during a news conference in February. “And from my seat, what I saw there, we have to do better in Nebraska.”
In its statement on Thursday, the USDA said its “evidence-based Summer EBT program is successfully being run in more than three dozen states, territories, and tribes, helping 21 million children across the U.S. USDA stands ready to support additional states, including Iowa, in offering Summer EBT to even more kids.”
