SC could have OK’d summer meals for poor students. Instead, hunger could worsen for 140K kids

While some public school students in South Carolina will enjoy sleeping in, playing video games and vacationing with family this summer, thousands more could face empty plates and hunger, as some lawmakers and advocates continue to scratch their heads over a decision by the governor.

In January, Gov. Henry McMaster announced that South Carolina would not participate in a federally-funded summer feeding program. He argued the need to move away from COVID-related programs and said other feeding programs are in place to help fill the bellies of the more than 140,000 children that are food insecure. The decision sparked outcry from Democratic lawmakers and advocates, who urged the governor to reconsider, to no avail.

“That was a COVID related benefit, extra,” McMaster said during a news conference earlier this year, defending his decision to abstain from the federal program. “We’ve got to get back to doing normal business, we just can’t continue that forever.”

With summer fast approaching, attorney and advocate Sue Berkowitz of the Appleseed Legal Justice Center, says the state lacks an adequate number of feeding programs to address the widespread hunger many students could face on summer break this year.

“One in five or six children in our state are food insecure,” Berkowitz said. “I think when (McMaster) made those statements, he was getting information from people who are very ill informed, and I’m dumbfounded as to why we would not want to feed our children.”

South Carolina primarily has three feeding programs to assist low-income families, the Summer Break Cafe program and Summer Seamless Option, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and administered by the state department of education and the federally-funded SNAP benefits program.

Berkowitz said no one program can provide a sufficient amount of food for the hundred of thousands South Carolinian kids who are food insecure for one reason or another.

For the Summer Break Cafe, Berkowitz said there simply aren’t enough feeding sites available to meet the state’s hunger demand. Even if there were, she said, many low-income families don’t have the resources to drive their children to the feeding site every day.

The number of Summer Break Cafe feeding sites depends on the number of sponsors, which varies from year to year, according to a spokesperson from the South Carolina Department of Education. Last year, there were “more than 600 sites statewide,” and “1.4 million meals were served through SBC last year,” according to the department.

The education department also pointed to the Summer Seamless Option as a means to providing food access for low-income students. Schools that participate in national school lunch or school breakfast programs are able to offer disadvantaged students free meals through the SSO.

In addition, the governor’s office said there are more than 150 food pantries across the state open year-round, although most of those facilities do not exclusively feed children.

Still, some Democratic lawmakers say the federal summer EBT program, designed to provide low-income families with food assistance during the summer months, offers a lifeline for many families in need. McMaster’s decision to forgo participation in the summer feeding program, however, has cast a shadow of uncertainty over the upcoming summer season.

The federal summer EBT program would help to alleviate hunger gaps by offering $120 per eligible child each summer for food. That’s far more money than what’s currently available through SNAP, according to Berkowitz.

“The SNAP program offers $1.66 per meal per person,” Berkowitz said. “We know that most families go through their SNAP benefits within the first two weeks every month in which they receive them. It’s just not enough, especially in this era of inflation, where people are really struggling to make ends meet.”

The average cost of a meal in South Carolina is $3.41, and the state needs an additional $310.8million to adequately meet food demands year-round for every South Carolinian, including adults and children, struggling with food security, according to data from Feeding America, a national non-profit organization that partners with food banks, food pantries, and local meal programs, seeking to curb food insecurity.

The summer EBT program is fully funded and facilitated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. States participating in the program — currently 35 states, all five U.S. Territories and four Indian Tribes — would only be responsible for covering administrative costs associated with the program, which for South Carolina, would be around $3.5 million, according to Berkowitz. The governor’s office, however, maintains the cost would be closer to $5 million. The South Carolina Department of Social Services did not respond to multiple phone calls from The State to gauge which number was most accurate.

Lawmakers and advocates have cited the potential consequences for vulnerable children who rely on school meal programs as a primary source of nutrition during the school year. With the summer EBT program now off the table, lawmakers say these children are at risk of going hungry without access to the nutritious meals they depend on.

“Food insecurity is a real issue in South Carolina,” said state Rep. Wendell Jones, D-Greenville. “We exceed the national average by about 300 basis points. That means that there are real families who are concerned about being able to feed themselves every night. These are the same families that we count on to continue to produce this economy that we keep bragging off. I’ll tell you what it’s hard to be a productive worker when you’re worried about if your children are eating.”