Thin rectangles of plastic worth hundreds of dollars in food benefits are on their way to thousands of Vermont families.

Households with school-age kids are receiving Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, which can be used to buy food from grocery stores or farmers markets. The cards — loaded with a minimum of $120 per child — come courtesy of the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which is intended for pandemic recovery.

All children who attend "Community Eligibility Provision" schools — those that provide free meals to all students — are eligible to receive the money, according to Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner of the Department for Children and Families, which is administering the program.



Pre-pandemic, a school met the provision if 40 percent or more of its students qualified for free meals based on family income. But because of Vermont's Universal School Meals Act of 2022 — which gave free breakfast and lunch to all public-school students, regardless of household income — all public schools in Vermont, and some independent ones, meet the criteria. (This legislative session, a second universal meals bill, H.165, became law without the governor's signature. It will provide free breakfast and lunch to Vermont schoolchildren for the foreseeable future.)
Through the debit card program, the state will distribute a total of $9.98 million to roughly 80,000 students in 53,000 households by mid-August. Each child will receive $120, plus an additional $8.18 for each day they were absent from school due to COVID-19. The benefit will be loaded onto the card, which is printed with a 16-digit number and the name of a parent or guardian.

Families can use the benefit in one of three ways: to purchase groceries; to buy food at a local farmers market that accepts EBT or "Crop Cash"; or to purchase nonperishable food items to donate.