by PEBT benefits that were issued on Friday, April 14, were provided to students who attended school in person AND had COVID-19-related absences during July to December 2022. If a parent is asking about the benefit, please do not encourage them to request a replacement PEBT card unless their child was eligible for a benefit for that time period and they no longer have their card. FSSA has already seen a very sharp increase in replacement card requests, and the volume of requests will cause the process to be slowed. Many parents may mistakenly believe this issuance was like the “summer” issuance when all students eligible for free or reduced-price meals on the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) received a benefit.
Please feel free to share FSSA’s PEBT webpage widely. There is an FAQ for parents as well as one for schools to help all understand how PEBT works.
Please also view the Pandemic EBT Outreach Toolkit for School Year 2022-2023 and Summer 2023. This toolkit was created to help you get the word out to families about Pandemic-EBT (P-EBT) benefits available to help families with groceries when kids miss school due to COVID-19 and during summer break.