Florida officials urged not to pass up millions in food assistance again

TALLAHASSEE– State officials said they passed up millions of dollars in new federal food assistance money because they have more than enough programs to feed Florida’s hungry children this summer.

But advocates for the hungry say the numbers tell a different story.

“The perception put forward by the state is that there is no need for other programs in the state,” said Sky Beard, the Florida director for the non-profit No Kid Hungry organization. “I wish it were true!”

While it’s too late for Florida to change course in time to affect kids this summer, 185 groups that seek to end hunger recently sent a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state leaders urging Florida to apply for the money by the Aug. 15 deadline for 2025.

“Every summer is a hungry time for kids.” Beard said.

One in five children in Florida are experiencing hunger because their families cannot afford enough groceries to make up for the free meals they got at school during the academic year, according to a recent report by Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks, pantries and community organizations dedicated to ending hunger.

Fewer than 10% of the 672,324 elementary school children in Florida who get free or reduced-price lunches during the school year receive a summer lunch, says a report by the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit organization working to end poverty-related hunger.

“Summer always means more demand “as low-income families with very tight budgets absorb the extra financial hit of one or more children eating at home,” said Greg Higgerson, chief development officer for Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida.

Second Harvest said in the past year the number of people using its online search tool to find food pantries jumped 95%.

Florida officials in December turned down a chance to get $259 million through SUN Bucks, a new program administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which also runs the school lunch program.

The new program would have provided $120 in grocery money each to the parents of about 2.1 million Florida school-aged children who receive free or reduced-price school lunches during the school year, advocates said.

Florida was one of 12 states that opted not to participate in the program.

Mallory McManus, a spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Families, which administers the federal school lunch program for Florida, has said that Florida had no need for the additional resources.

“We anticipate that our state’s full approach to serving children will continue to be successful this year without any additional federal programs that inherently always come with some federal strings attached,” she told the Sentinel in December and other news outlets as recently as June 21.

McManus did not say what that “full approach” entailed, what other programs Florida offers to food insecure children or what strings are on the federal money, other than the requirement for the state to contribute to administrative costs.

But Beard said the state manages several other federal food assistance programs with similar “strings” to SUN Bucks, including the school-year lunch program.

Florida would have needed to put up $12 million to share the administration costs of running the new program, a small fraction of the money it would have received in return.

This isn’t the first time Florida balked at participating in a federal food assistance program. In 2021, the state turned down more than $800 million that would have fed 2.2 million children during the COVID-19 pandemic, but reconsidered when it was pressured by nonprofits and politicians to take the money.

The department continued to administer the pandemic-related summer food assistance program for two more years, but it ended last summer.

The new SUN Bucks program aimed to replace it.

Because of the state’s decision, Florida’s neediest families are not getting the benefits of the new program —  $40 a month per child, or $120 for the entire summer, that parents could have spent at a grocery store or farmer’s market , Beard said.

“The state has nothing to stand in the place of the loss of SUN Bucks,” she said.

The new program would have complemented other summer meal programs provided by the state, such as Summer BreakSpot, another federal program that provides up to 16 million meals to children at hundreds of locations across the state.

Not all needy families can get their children to those locations where breakfast and lunch is served, however, so its reach is far less than the school-based meals. That makes SUN Bucks more convenient as parents would be able to buy food for the home, Beard said.

“This is a statewide concern that affects colleagues, friends and families in our communities that are really challenged,” Beard said, “It would be highly unfortunate that Florida didn’t take advantage of that in 2025,” she added.