A busy summer is winding down at the Cherokee Nation Public Health Department in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. But administrative assistant Jennie Laconsello is still fielding plenty of questions from families trying to track down and use their Summer EBT benefits.
“What I can do is take down your name and number and run it over to our vendor side,” Laconsello explained to a parent calling about which local grocery stores accept the electronic benefit transfer cards.
Between calls, Laconsello and her colleagues race to process hundreds of last-minute applications ahead of an Aug. 20 deadline for families to use their benefits. Laconsello’s list includes the names of over 300 eligible kids.
“It’s not just parents my age” applying, Laconsello said. “It’s grandparents, it’s aunts and uncles who are raising kids who’ve come into their families one way or another. So, even though it’s supplemental, it’s still a need.”
This summer, the U.S. Agriculture Department’s new Summer EBT program took some pressure off millions of families’ food bills. It provides eligible lower-income families with $120 per school-age kid to help cover the costs of groceries during the summer months.
To access those federal funds, states have to put up half the costs of administering the program. But 14 states left that money on the table. They’re all GOP-led. Many are near the top of the list of states where kids are most reliant on free and reduced-price meals during the school year.
In January, Oklahoma declined to participate in the program. Tribes, including Cherokee Nation, kicked it into high gear.
“We didn’t have very much time to prepare. We just had to really jump in and start doing it,” said Melissa Stayathome, director of the Cherokee Nation Summer EBT program.
Cherokee entered a partnership with Chickasaw and Muscogee Nations to offer Summer EBT within their borders. That’s an area of nearly 20,000 square miles across eastern and central Oklahoma, including part of Tulsa, and home to over 100,000 eligible Native and non-Native kids.
Stayathome said the first hurdle was tracking down National School Lunch Program participation data for schools in that area so most eligible families could be automatically enrolled in Summer EBT.
“Unfortunately, our state opted out of sharing that information with us,” Stayathome said.
According to the Cherokee Nation Public Health Department, the state proposed an “inadequate data-sharing agreement” that the nation was unable to sign. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Stayathome said her office spent months tracking down data directly from over 100, mostly rural, school districts. Since about April, it’s been working to enroll as many families as possible before the benefits expire.
“From the time we get here until the time we leave, a few days after hours, we’re still really trying to make sure cards get out to families,” Stayathome said.
Cherokee Nation Deputy Chief Bryan Warner called Oklahoma’s lack of participation “a disappointment.”
“Because I think of those that are not in our area,” Warner said. “Those people can’t access the program on non-tribal land.”
Stitt’s office didn’t respond to questions about why the state opted out of Summer EBT, but Stitt said in January the new program “isn’t fully vetted” and the state didn’t have enough information about the administrative costs it would incur.
According to Warner, Cherokee Nation’s investment in staffing and marketing its Summer EBT program has more than paid off.
“It’s around $250,000 for us to administer this program, and it yields about a $3.5 million opportunity to put that food on the table,” Warner said, adding that offering the program aligns with Cherokee values.
“When you’re looking at gadugi, which means ‘working together,’” Warner said.
Cherokee and its partner nations can administer Summer EBT independently of neighboring states, thanks to tribal self-governance laws. Eric Henson with Harvard University’s Project on Indigenous Governance and Development said this is just one example of tribal governments using their sovereignty to fill economic gaps.
“Administration of programs, health care, transportation, preschools. The list goes on and on,” Henson said. “We saw a lot of this during the pandemic, when living on tribal lands sometimes meant easier access to COVID-19 testing, [protective equipment] and vaccines.”
“Lots of tribes kind of threw the doors open and went, ‘Hey, if you want to get vaccinated, we’ve got supplies. It’ll help all of us get back to work,’” Henson added.
When tribal governments thrive, Henson said, neighboring communities benefit.
“There are all these knock-on benefits from tribes having great largesse with their social services, paying attention to these public goods and spreading them far and wide throughout the community and the region,” Henson said.
Public goods like rural broadband access, affordable child and elder care, and on Cherokee Nation, some wiggle room in summer budgets.
“It helps our family out really a whole bunch,” said Andrea, a Summer EBT participant in Tahlequah. Andrea is a mom of four with three kids still in school. She works in child care and asked Marketplace not to use her last name to protect her family’s privacy.
Every year, Andrea budgets for the three-month gap when her kids aren’t getting free school breakfast and lunch, but said it’s hard to afford everyone’s preferences during that stretch.
“Because our kids really like fruits and vegetables. And then they like to make those parfaits,” she said.
This summer, Andrea said an extra $360 from Summer EBT helped her keep up with the cost of berries and yogurt and freed up room elsewhere in her budget.
“We can go do something else with that,” Andrea said, like get ahead on back-to-school shopping and paying her kids’ fall sports fees.
