Six-year-old Emma Ethington enjoys her chocolate milk during her lunch Monday at The Learning Lab in Terre Haute. Photos by Joseph C. Garza | CNHI News Indian
TERRE HAUTE — Local food pantries will take on added challenges this summer.
In addition to providing sustenance to the food insecure with less funding from the federal government, they will have to compensate for the state of Indiana’s failing to renew its participation in the summer SUN Bucks program, which provided meals for children who also received them while in school.
“Yes, this will affect our students,” said Katie Shane, Vigo County School Corp. communications director.
“The Sun Bucks program in past years was for all children in the state of Indiana that were on free or reduced status,” Shane wrote in an email. “Assistance was sent to the homes of these students. Currently, the state of Indiana is not participating in the Sun Bucks program. … The students will not receive these benefits this year.”
However, Shane added, “We do have a number of locations that are serving meals at different times over the summer. We are currently serving free breakfast and lunch at the Learning Lab. The public will use the front door and eat along with the Boys and Girls Club. This location will be serving all summer long.
“We are also currently serving free breakfast and lunch at North High School,” she added. “Again, the public should use the front door and they will also eat with the students at summer school. We will be serving at North until June 27. We will also be offering free meals along with the ISU and Ivy Tech student programs in June.”
Catholic Charities Assistant Agency Director Jennifer Tames said, “We are seeing a progressive increase in the amount of food insecurity rates across our entire service area … with 2023 numbers higher than pre-pandemic levels. In Vigo County alone, we rank fourth in the state in overall food insecurity, at 18.3%. vs. 15.1% throughout the state.
“Childhood food insecurity is even worse — Vigo County ranks third in the state, at 24% of our children vs. state average of 18.5%. That’s a sad state for children in our communities.”
USDA PROVIDING LESS FOOD
Making it sadder is that the food supply from the U.S. Department of Agriculture has dropped rapidly.
“In April alone, Catholic Food Charities was 100,000 pounds behind a year ago in terms of the amount of USDA commodities that we had received,” Tames said. “We had heard from the Indiana Department of Health that at least 50,000-60,000 pounds have since been canceled.
“So, higher food insecurity rates, children who are out of school so they’re no longer receiving free or reduced breakfast or lunch at school, inflation that still has prices higher than we’ve ever seen before, and less food coming through the food bank,” Tames concluded. “It’s a perfect storm.”
Last year, 669,000 Hoosier children who qualified for food benefits and reduced-price school meals got an additional $120 while schools were closed for the summer, for a total of roughly $80 million.
But Indiana opted out of the program this year, with Gov. Mike Braun’s team saying that former Gov. Eric Holcomb’s administration hadn’t done the legwork in advance of 2025.
Holcomb’s administration failed to finalize contract amendments with the Electronic Benefit Transfer processor to allocate funding for Summer EBT and to secure a system vendor to support technical enhancements and application processing for 2025, the Braun administration said. Indiana notified the federal oversight agency that it wouldn’t be participating on Feb. 20, 2025.
And in Indiana, every state agency’s budget was trimmed by 5%; public health programs were also sharply cut.
“No matter [how] that occurred, the sad thing is that families in our communities are the ones who are going to have to suffer,” Tames said.
Still, she said, “While we have all these external forces that are working against us, we have things going on internally that we’re trying to do to ensure that even though all that’s happening, we’re trying our best to reduce that impact on our neighbors facing food insecurity.”
WITH HELP, LOCAL AGENCIES PRESS ON
Federal funding is not a high percentage of the dollars Catholic Charities uses, Tames said.
“Although it’s going to be difficult to offset some of these issues, especially what our families are seeing this summer, we are nowhere near a situation where we are worried about longtime sustainability of the organization,” she said. “That’s the positive for us.”
The organization’s recent focus on providing fresh produce has not been affected, said Tames, thanks in part to the Indiana Pacers Foundation.
“The Pacers have agreed to double the amount of boxes that they give us a month to specifically Vigo and Clay County — that’s a big part of maintaining fresh produce,” she said The Pacers’ Drive and Dish program — yet another reason to cheer on Tyrese Halliburton and his team — began in Terre Haute at the beginning of January, providing food for students at Ben Franklin Elementary School, Sarah Scott Middle School and West Vigo Middle and High Schools. Doubling that amount will enable Catholic Charities to meet its goal of adding three more schools.
Manna from Seven receives no federal money, and so will only be peripherally affected by the disappearance of the schools’ lunch programs, said Susan Seitz, the organization’s CEO.
“We may see an increase in patronage from folks that are affected by this cut, but otherwise there is no change and nothing to report,” she said via text.
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