how has this program been life-saving during the pandemic? well, this was a critical response very early in the pandemic because in a regular year, about 30 million kids rely on free or reduced priced school meals so shutdowns eliminated a really important source of household school resources. schools worked really heroically to provide grab-and-go meals so that wouldn t be adequate so they created ebts to provide electric means for meals lost from the shutdown. it was a struggle because schools didn t have up-to-date mailing information and the systems that collect school data didn t talk to the systems that would actually issue the cards which is usually the state