Woodkirk Stone
Tisha Pike lives in Eagle River with her son, who is in grade two. Before the pandemic, he received free lunches at his school, Birchwood ABC Elementary. Then the schools went online and she had to spend more on groceries.
She was reimbursed for those runs through a federal program called the Pandemic-Electronic Benefit Transfer Program, or P-EBT.
“That stability, and being able to know that I have money to make sure my child has food, that means the world,” she said. “Because I know it’s something he doesn’t have to stress about.”
It took months for the Spring 2020 money to reach Pike. And she’s still waiting for the money from fall 2020, when Anchorage schools were online.
Students were eligible for P-EBT if they were enrolled in their school’s free or reduced-price lunch program, and if the school closed due to COVID. In the Anchorage School District, nearly 14,000 students — about a third of the district’s students — meet the requirements for free and reduced-price meals.
Anthony Reinert, SNAP outreach manager for the Food Bank of Alaska, said it’s about making up for those lost meals.
“It’s not a benefit in the traditional sense – it’s reimbursement,” he said. “These children who have been unable to attend school due to the pandemic have missed out on meals that would have been provided through free and reduced meal programs. These meals then had to be paid for by the parents while they ate at home.
Families can check the food bank’s online eligibility calculator to see if they were automatically enrolled for the 2020-2021 school year. Reinert said some families could receive up to $1,800 per child.
Rolling out the program last year was plagued with problems and delays. According to the Food Bank of Alaska, only 28 school districts in the state received P-EBT funds for the 2020-2021 school year. Families from the state’s largest districts — Anchorage, the borough of Matanuska-Susitna, Fairbanks and others — are still waiting.
Jo Dawson, the state administrator of the Department of Education’s child nutrition program, said reimbursing families for spring 2020 was an easier process. That’s because the closures were pretty consistent across all schools.
“Basically two weeks in March, four weeks in April and three weeks in May,” she said. “The 2021 school year was all over the map.”
Last year, schools closed and reopened at different times. Some students have changed schools or left their district. This made the data much more complicated.
Shawnda O’Brien heads the State’s Division of Public Assistance. She said distributing funds takes so long because state employees manually sift through school district data. Automating the process requires the use of an outdated computer programming language.
“Most people who have this experience are retired or retiring,” she said. “It’s not something someone in college would learn to do.”
Starting from scratch in a more modern programming language would take years. They have started this process, but in the meantime the department is looking nationwide for people who can work with the existing system.
“Asking people to be patient is hard, especially when it comes to money,” O’Brien said. “The most important thing we can do is let them know that we are working on it, and we understand the hardship this is placing on families and that we are working as hard as we can to find a solution.”
Some states have requested P-EBT again for this school year, but like many states, Alaska’s request is still pending. For now, families awaiting last year’s funds can check the Food Bank of Alaska’s website for updates or sign up to receive their emails.
Until their cards arrive in the mail, parents like Pike will have to keep waiting.
“Most people wrote it off,” Pike said. “I will never get this money. At this point, it’s like beating a dead horse.
O’Brien said the Public Assistance Division aims to have a clearer disbursement schedule within a month.