Pandemic EBT Admin Grants

The following message was sent to the Food & Nutrition email list on August 18:

Under Section 721 of the FY 2021 Omnibus and COVID Relief and Response Act, funds are available to SFAs that, when not in a pandemic, operate the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. These funds are to be used to assist with the administrative costs associated with the Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) Program. These grant funds may be used to reimburse allowable expenses incurred between October 1, 2020 through September 30, 2021.

Funds need to be disbursed by the state agency by the end of March 2022. Further communications will be forthcoming about when you can expect to receive funds. This will occur after data has been validated.

To be eligible to receive funding, the expenses must be reasonable and allowable. Examples of allowable expenses include:

• Reporting student-level or school level learning models to the State;
• Designated staff to respond to parent requests and questions;
• Collecting and processing school meal applications specifically to establish eligibility for P-EBT; and
• Conducting Direct Certification runs.

Examples of unallowable costs are those expenses that are:

• Not necessary or responsible for the administration of the FY 2021 P-EBT Program; and
• Expenses already reimbursed under another Federal award.

If P-EBT expenses were already paid for with other federal dollars (such as ESSER funds) the SFA may reallocate those federal funds that your SFA already spent on P-EBT, starting from October 1, 2020 through present. If you choose to reallocate funds, the following needs to happen:

Public SFAs

• Change coding in WUFAR; Source 717, Project 171 was assigned to this funding
• Update fiscal ledger to reflect change of funding; and
• Have documentation available for actual time spent on the administration of P-EBT at the local level and be able to produce documentation if requested.

Private SFAs

• P-EBT related expenses would need to be identified in private SFA’s internal accounting systems.
• Have documentation available for actual time spent on the administration of P-EBT and be able to produce documentation if requested.

USDA is allowing a simplified approach to distributing funds to School Food Authorities. The simplified method utilizes USDA's research into the cost structure of school meal programs in order to provide an estimate of the costs. This simplified approach follows the following funding chart:

The number of eligible children for P-EBT is based on the number of National School Lunch and School Breakfast Program free and reduced price eligible students served. SFAs may use any reference month within FY 2020 (October 2019-September 2020) that reflects the highest count of free and reduced price eligible students. For schools that are not Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) schools, this is determined by the number of free and reduced-price eligible students identified through direct certification and free and reduced-price meal applications. For schools that are CEP, this is determined by the total number of enrolled students since all students that attend a CEP school are eligible for P-EBT. In order to verify eligible students and provide accurate funding amounts, Authorized Representatives (as indicated on the School Nutrition Contract) from each SFA must complete the Local Level Administrative Cost Grant Survey. SFAs may choose not to elect the additional funding, but must complete the survey. The deadline to submit the survey is October 1, 2021.

Documentation must be available at the SFA indicating the number of free and reduced price eligible students that were used to determine the funding tier. Standard accounting practices require appropriate records to support costs and expenditures for program operations.

In all cases, time and effort documentation is required under the uniform grant guidance for all Federal programs. Please reference the DPI Time and Effort Reporting Guidance for more information. Additional information addressing time and effort reporting can also be found in the DPI Stimulus FAQ.

For questions about this information, contact the School Nutrition Team dpifns@dpi.wi.gov