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Friend,
The day school gets out for summer sparkles in the American imagination as a vision of children spilling out of classrooms into joyful weeks of freedom and warmth.
But in reality, the summer months bring something else for millions of children across the country: hunger.
For people like Shaneka Haynes, a single mother in Atlanta with five children aged 3 to 15, there is also worry. Even fear.
When school is in session, her children get hot breakfasts and lunches at school. She relies on those meals to ensure that her kids don’t go hungry, so they can focus on their schoolwork while she works long hours braiding hair in a beauty salon. The $300 in food stamps she gets each month don’t stretch far.
“During the summer it’s really not enough,” said Haynes, 34.
The nearest grocery store is a 30-minute walk from the small house Haynes rents with the help of federal housing assistance. She has no car and no family members nearby who can help her put food on the table. Some nights, there is no food.
“I try to go to church food giveaways and such, but it’s hard to get over there,” Haynes said. “It’s harder in the summer than it is in the school year.”
The lack of food over the summer is a tragedy for millions of American families, and the federal government is seeking to address this problem with a new food assistance program approved by Congress with bipartisan support.
The idea is simple: Give families with low incomes a modest sum they can use to buy food during the summer, when free school breakfasts and lunches for students in need are not available.
But 15 states have opted out of the program set to begin this year. That shuts more than 8 million children out of the food assistance this June, July and August, about half of them in the Deep South states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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