A new federal program that provides grocery money in the summer for kids who qualify for free lunch at school could feed an estimated additional 67,000 kids.
Yet here鈥檚 how many applications for the summer food assistance program Colorado received last summer 鈥� 25.
It鈥檚 not as bad as it sounds, as more than 550,000 students in Colorado were automatically enrolled in the summer food program, which meant their families received a grocery card loaded with $120 per child, or $40 per month.
Those who automatically qualified for the program, called Summer EBT, included families who had submitted paperwork to receive free or reduced-price school lunch or applied for monthly food assistance benefits. Children in foster care are automatically eligible, as are kids who are homeless or migrants 鈥� if their families already qualified for free school lunch or monthly food assistance.
Still, an estimated 67,000 children across the state missed out on the program because their families would have had to apply and did not know that, according to an analysis by an independent consultant. That adds up to about $8 million in federal funds that Colorado didn鈥檛 tap into last summer.
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