Kennall Mond didn’t understand why his two elementary students recently received pre-loaded debit cards in the mail.
The cards totaled nearly $900 in federal aid that the Cobb County family didn’t need. He wondered if it was a mistake — or even fraud.
“They just showed up,” Mond said.
The aid was distributed to families in the Cobb County School School District as part of a federal food assistance program called the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer. The debit cards were intended to help low-income students who qualified for free and reduced-price school meals to purchase additional groceries.
But even Cobb families who didn’t meet the income criteria received the cards.
Research show free breakfasts and lunches provided by schools are critical to preventing hunger, but school closures during the pandemic disrupted normal cafeteria service.
The debit-card program was targeted for low-income students who attended schools that were “required to close or reduce operating hours” for five consecutive days during the 2020-2021 academic year.
So why did the Mond family receive the cards?
A district spokeswoman blamed it on a “miscommunication” between the school system and the state agencies overseeing the program.
According to Meghan Frick, a state Department of Education spokeswoman, the district reported that every student was eligible for free and reduced-price meals. With roughly 107,000 students, the school system is the state’s second-largest school district.
But only about 42,000 of the district’s students were actually eligible in 2020-2021, according to state data.
A federal waiver during the pandemic gave districts more flexibility to provide free meals, even to those students who don’t normally receive them. But that was different than the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer, a program only for students from low-income families or who were already enrolled in assistance programs.
“While all students received meals at no cost last year due to a COVID-related federal waiver, per federal guidelines, that does not mean all students were … eligible” for the the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer program, Frick said in an email.
The school district spokeswoman said: “During the height of the pandemic, as was the case across the state of Georgia, all Cobb students received meals at no charge during the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years.”
Credit: Steve Schaefer
Credit: Steve Schaefer
Each student the district said was eligible would have received two payments, according to the Department of Human Services. The first was $68.20, for closures in Cobb schools during the 2020-2021 academic year. The second was $375, for the summer of 2021.
“For some people I guess it was a welcome surprise, if you actually need the aid,” Mond said. “But for a significant number of people who didn’t need the aid, it was in fact confusing. There were people who thought it was fraud or identity theft or that kind of thing.”
After receiving the payments in December and January, some parents took to social media to try to find a way to donate the funds. Mond connected with families who were buying groceries and donating them to church food banks or to schools.
The Department of Education is working with the school district to ensure the submission of accurate data, Frick said.
“Moving forward, we do not expect any problems,” a district spokeswoman said.
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