Food money for families of students
Parents of Texas schoolchildren who receive free and reduced school lunches cannot afford to leave $300 million in food money on the table.
The federally funded Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer program, or P-EBT, is providing a one-time payment of $285 for each Texas student who was eligible for free or reduced school lunch during the spring semester.
Eligible families who have not received their student’s payment need to apply. In some high-poverty school districts, such as San Antonio Independent School District, all students qualify, regardless of family income.
About 3.3 million students participated in free or reduced-price school meal plans across the state last semester, but so far only about 2 million have benefited from the extra food money. The deadline to apply is July 31.
The application deadline was extended a month after only about $700 million of the $1 billion available to Texas students was distributed during the initial time frame, which closed in June.
About 40 percent of the families of students who participate in the free and reduced-lunch program are on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly referred to as food stamps. Families on SNAP had the additional food payment allotment added to their state-issued electronic benefit transfer cards May 22. These cards can be used like a debit card at the grocery store. The other 60 percent of the families had to submit a request for the benefit. That has been bumpy for those parents who are not accustomed to dealing with the state’s bureaucracy. We understand the frustration. Parents have to leave callback numbers in case additional information is needed. However, those calls from the state need to be picked up or parents lose their opportunity to complete the process. There is no callback number from the state. Surely we can come up with a better system that accommodates the schedules of working parents who are also taking care of children and unaccustomed to navigating bureaucracies. Children should not have to go hungry because parents are having a difficult time navigating a system that is not user-friendly. Food insecurity is endemic in our community during the best times and alarmingly prevalent in this COVID-19 moment. The San Antonio Food Bank is serving 120,000 people each week.
Many school districts started providing food for students to pick up after campuses closed in March. Some have continued some of this service through the summer, but there has been a significant drop in participation compared with previous years.
It is estimated only 25 percent of students who were eligible for free and reduced-priced school meals took advantage of the food available to them once in-person classes ceased.
Eric Cooper, San Antonio Food Bank director, said youth food programs are also operating at a lower scale. Most summers, the Food Bank provides food to 200 gathering sites for youth. But this summer food is going to only 60 to 70 sites. School-age children are not congregating at park and recreation centers or other youth clubs this summer.
Most of the youth Food Bank workers are seeing, Cooper said, are in the vehicles in distribution lines, pop-up food activities and local pantries.
The need isn’t going to let up anytime soon as the number of COVID-19 cases soars, business reopenings slow and schools potentially have to resume distance learning.
For this reason, state officials should seek continued funding of the P-EBT program through the fall semester. Students should not have to go hungry because a pandemic is keeping them off campus. We urge parents to access all the resources available to them. Information on applying for the program is available at hhs.texas.gov/pebt or by contacting the P-EBT Call Center at 833-613-6220, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Presidents Donald Trump and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico met last week to celebrate the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. While the agreement is a positive step, the USMCA is no panacea, and the overall bilateral environment is challenging.
On July 1, the USMCA entered into force. The agreement replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement as the region’s guiding trade framework, governing the movement of hundreds of billions of dollars in goods and services. While the agreement will provide order for regional trade, its immediate effects will pale in comparison to other forces currently at play.
The new agreement looks a lot like its predecessor. However, the USMCA contains some significant new rules and frameworks. In particular, the North American automotive industry will have to prove higher regional content for its vehicles (66 percent, compared to 62.5 percent), Canada will open its dairy market, and there are guidelines for newer sectors such as e-commerce. USMCA also requires that 40 to 45 percent of the work for any vehicle comes from employees making at least $16 an hour.
While the USMCA aims to boost North America’s interlocked economies, other forces are reshaping the region. The COVID-19 pandemic is the largest disrupting force. Across the United States and Mexico, new case numbers continue to tick upward. The pandemic has decimated the regional and global economy at the very moment that USMCA is promising to spur economic growth.
The situation is likely to be most severe in Mexico, where López Obrador has responded by doubling down on austerity. He has also attempted to make Pemex, the state-owned oil company, the centerpiece of the country’s economic development, even amid bottomed-out petroleum prices.
In response to these economic contractions, governments have been speeding up timelines to reopen their economies. Mexico City has begun reopening shops, markets, hotels and restaurants at a limited capacity. U.S. states and Canada have also undertaken reopenings. While these steps will allow for some economic life, they also open the door for further outbreaks.
These closings and reopenings have also contributed to a regional rethink of global business. For more than two decades, North American businesses steadily expanded their supply chains across the continent and the world. Automotive, aerospace and electronics manufacturers shipped parts across the region’s borders as products were steadily assembled. Yet COVID-19 exposed the risks associated with geographically dispersed supply chains, as each country’s response to the pandemic affects a company’s production.
In North America, this played out in dramatic fashion. As Mexico shut down factories, U.S. companies couldn’t get the parts necessary to continue production. U.S. companies pushed Mexico and succeeded in getting factories added to the country’s list of essential businesses that could reopen. This and similar experiences globally will reshape how companies think about their supply chains and resilience.
Amid the economic turmoil, the region’s political leadership will also continue to influence North America’s economic integration, at times in direct opposition to free trade. The Trump administration has again threatened Canada with 10 percent aluminum tariffs. If the administration moves forward, Canada will impose retaliatory tariffs on aluminum and potentially on a range of other products within the USMCA’s first few weeks.
These threats and economic sanctions are unlikely to go away soon. Since entering office, the Trump administration has wielded tariffs to extract economic and other concessions from countries. The USMCA’s implementation is unlikely to fundamentally change this dynamic. In fact, it could aggravate tensions as businesses adapt to the new rules and the agreement’s effects become clearer.
Yet, even if North America’s most immediate economic shifts won’t come from the USMCA, the agreement remains a major achievement. It also represents another bet that North America makes on itself — where the three countries tie themselves and their economies together to ride out challenges.