For the second year, it looks likely that Georgia won’t participate in a federal program that helps feed hungry families during the summertime.

Summer EBT, also called Sun Bucks, provides qualifying families with $120 for each eligible child in their household. Congress approved the program in 2022 to help feed children who receive free and reduced-price lunches at school during summer break, when schools are closed or have limited hours.

But Aug. 15 was the first deadline for states to notify the U.S. Department of Agriculture if they plan to participate next year in Summer EBT, and the governor’s office has not provided clarity on Georgia’s decision. On Thursday, it did not immediately respond for comment on whether Georgia submitted a plan.

Two communities that could be greatly impacted by Georgia’s decision about Summer EBT are Black and rural residents in need of food assistance.

“There have been significant increases in food insecurity really across all demographic groups over the past couple of years, but Black families are significantly more likely to experience food insecurity than white families for sure, and more likely to experience food insecurity than any other large demographic group in our state,” said Kyle Waide, president and CEO of the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

Earlier in the week, Garrison Douglas, a spokesperson for Gov. Brian Kemp, said in an email to Capital B that the state still had concerns around the “lack of nutrition standards” and “fiscal sustainability” of the program. Instead, the state will continue to promote its two summer feeding programs. In a separate email, Douglas said that the state’s Department of Human Services would “confirm” the state’s decision on Summer EBT “when the time comes.”

“In my mind that means that there are all these children during the summer who have nothing to eat, and, as a mom, I find that unconscionable,” said U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath in an interview with Capital B last month after she sent a letter in July to Kemp urging him to opt into the program. McBath, who represents Georgia’s 7th Congressional District, sent another letter to the governor in August with several Democratic state lawmakers, apparently to no avail.

Summer EBT does require that states split half of the administrative costs for the program with the federal government. According to Kemp’s office, Georgia would need to contribute $4.5 million. In July, the USDA announced grant funding to help states cover those costs, but this doesn’t seem to have changed the governor’s mind.

Georgia is one of at least 12 states that opted out of Summer EBT in its first year, according to the USDA’s website. By leaving federal dollars on the table, an estimated 1.2 million eligible children across the state will miss out on money next summer that might have assisted in paying for groceries in their homes. It happens as the cost of groceries has climbed by roughly 25% since February 2020, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and as nonprofit organizations are seeing an increase in demand for food assistance.

Interviews with food bank workers, farmers, and state officials ahead of the federal deadline outlined the current challenges that families in need face with finding food assistance in the summer. They include transportation challenges, inconvenient mealtimes at feeding sites, or lack of availability of feeding sites altogether.

Summer feeding program issues

While Georgia did not participate in Summer EBT this year, the state pointed Georgians toward the state’s existing summer feeding programs.

Georgia offers Happy Helpings, run by the Department of Early Care and Learning, and Seamless Summer Option, run by Georgia’s Department of Education. Both have designated sites where meals are served to school-age children in the summer, and both are funded through the USDA.

Seamless Summer Option provided more than 2.5 million breakfasts and 3.2 million lunches, and Happy Helpings served 2.8 million meals in 2023, according to Kemp’s office.

But those who work closely with families looking for food assistance say these programs are not serving as many children as they need to due to accessibility challenges.

Danah Craft, the executive director of Feeding Georgia, which is a statewide network of food banks, said that only around 13% of the students that qualify for free and reduced lunch are being served in the summer by these programs.

Craft said that many families struggle getting to the summer feeding sites because of  transportation challenges during the summer and because some sites have short windows of time for eating or picking up meals.

“If children have parents who are working or if they don’t have transportation to be able to drive to where the location is, they’re not going to have access and the meal times are very prescribed,” said Craft. “You have to pick up the food, or you have to eat the meals, like between 11 a.m and 1 p.m. So there’s a lot of wonderful things about that program — it’s just not reaching enough people.”

Accessibility issues with the feeding programs are exacerbated by the fact that some counties don’t have meal sites available in their communities, and some sites end operation before the summer break is over.

Of Georgia’s 159 counties, 100 had feeding sites under the Happy Helpings program this year, up from 85 two years ago, said Cindy Kicklighter, an official with the Department of Early Care and Learning. She added that some counties missed by that program could still be served by Seamless Summer.

According to Feeding Georgia, of the meal sites that don’t require registration, 585 shut down in July. Many of those sites were with the Seamless Summer Option.

Linette Dodson, the Georgia state school nutrition director with the state’s Department of Education, said that while the parameters in Georgia for the Seamless Summer Option require that sites operate when “school is not in session,” the timeline for that operation depends on what resources are available locally with schools. She said that “several districts” operated for the full summer.

“Each district determines what they have the capacity to really support because typically this is done by the staff that works throughout the school year, and there’s always a lot of work that has to be done in preparation for the start of school when the buildings open back up,” said Dodson.

Increasing need

With access already a challenge, advocates say residents across the state are in need of extra food assistance this year.

Ashley Keyes, executive chef for the Center Helping Obesity In Children End Successfully, said nonprofits like her organization, which does pop-up food pantry events throughout the year, have been stretched thin for food resources due to the rise in need for food assistance.

Her organization is facing dual pressures. On one hand, more families are looking for assistance. On the other, there’s less food to distribute.

“What we’ve seen from that is a decrease in the number of families we serve. On average, we served 600 to 800 families twice monthly,” Keyes said. “Now we serve about 300 families a month.”

Waide, of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, said he’s seen lines lengthen at food pantries across metro Atlanta and in north Georgia because financial assistance programs that were previously available during the pandemic are now gone.

“So you have fewer resources that are being provided to people at the same time that their cost of living has gone up tremendously, and that’s causing more and more people to need help, which means we’re serving more people than we ever have,” he said.

“The food that’s available for us through donated sources and through federal commodities, it’s just not growing fast enough to keep up with the level of need.”

Black and rural disparities

That level of need has only grown among the ranks of Georgians who are food insecure and also either Black or live in rural areas. Those residents face higher barriers when accessing food for their families, including food deserts and inadequate infrastructure. Black residents are two times more likely to experience food insecurity compared to white residents, Waide said, based on the data gathered by his organization across 29 counties.

State Rep. Imani Barnes, a DeKalb County Democrat, said Black residents in some parts of her district often have less access to healthy foods compared to wealthier, whiter areas. That forces many to turn to less nutritious options like fast food or even buying groceries at gas stations, dollar stores, or convenience stores.

“If that’s what’s in walking distance, then that’s what we’re most likely to eat. And so what you’ll notice is hypertension and high obesity is prevalent more in the Black community,” said Barnes.

Keyes said that limited access to fresh produce due to food deserts, coupled with a history of illnesses like diabetes and hypertension, result in Black communities suffering greatly from food insecurity.

“It affects our population the most, I say, because of the lack of resources available to our communities,” she said. “If I go to a grocery store in downtown Atlanta or Buckhead, it looks totally different than if I go to East Point or College Park, just because of what is sold in those stores.”

Beverly Robinson runs a goat farm in rural Treutlen County, about 150 miles southeast of Atlanta. It’s one of the 59 Georgia counties that did not have a Happy Helpings meal site in 2023. The majority of those counties were rural.

Robinson said it’s common in rural areas for there to be only one grocery store, and for that store to be many miles from residential areas. Additionally, lots of people don’t have access to transportation, which can lead to inflated grocery prices, she said.

“When you’re in a community where you only have one of something, then price gouging happens because those merchants take advantage of the fact that the people can’t go anywhere else, which is a big issue in rural America,” she said.

Not too late?

While the Aug. 15 deadline is set forward by the USDA as a marker for states to help ensure that their Summer EBT program will be able to run effectively, it’s not the final say.

States are required to submit a Notice of Intent to participate in next year’s program no later than Jan. 1 to the USDA, and it wouldn’t be unprecedented for a state to join the Summer EBT program even after these deadlines.

Several states, including Louisiana, Vermont, and Nebraska, missed these deadlines in 2024 and had Summer EBT this past summer.

Those pushing for the program have not yet lost hope for a possibility of Summer EBT in Georgia. Craft said that her organization is going to continue to work with state officials and present to them their data around accessibility issues to summer meal sites in the hopes of making a convincing argument for why Summer EBT should exist in the future in the state.

McBath said that although she doesn’t understand the governor’s reasoning for not participating in Summer EBT, she’s determined to make sure that families in the state are being fed.

“We may never have an answer on why he’s chosen to make these various decisions. My goal is just to stay focused on making sure that I am equipping our children and our families to be successful going forward,” she said.

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