More than 500 thousand kids across Louisiana benefit from free and reduced-cost meals at schools

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - More than 500 thousand kids across Louisiana benefit from free and reduced-cost meals at their schools.

And with many families still recovering from the pandemic, putting food on the table when kids are home for the summer can be a challenge.

“Families will have additional food to take care of their children while they’re home for the summer,” Shavana Howard with the Department of Children and Family Services said.

Howard said in a state like Louisiana, where the poverty rate is high, this is important to kids.

“So many in Louisiana, we have a very high poverty rate, so we obviously have a lot of children who rely on their free and reduced-price meals at schools in order to eat so this is a way to ensure that those children that are in poverty will get that assistance,” Howard said.

If your child already gets free or reduced meals at school, you don’t need to apply for summer P-EBT. It will be automatically loaded onto your P-EBT card as SNAP benefits.

Howard said it’s also important that they have your latest information.

“We see so many families who that don’t keep that information updated and when programs like P-EBT are brought to bear then there’s a lot of...we’ve had over 11,000 changes in addresses and all of that takes time and it all stems from parents not making sure the schools have the most updated information for their children,” Howard said.

If you need help getting your kids’ summer P-EBT, then go to www.pebt/la.org.

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