JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – The Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) and the Mississippi Department of Human Services (MDHS) will be releasing $246 million in P-EBT benefits to Mississippi children by late October 2021.

Summer P-EBT is designed to meet the nutrition needs of children throughout the summer months, while school lunches were not an option. School year P-EBT benefits are meant to help families with additional food costs that their household may have experienced due to school closures during the last school year. 

The Summer 2021 payment will be provided to each child in the state who was eligible to receive free or reduced-price lunch under the National School Lunch Program during the 2020-21 school year. Each eligible child will receive a payment of $375. According to officials, 345,000 school children in Mississippi will receive the summer P-EBT benefit. 

For the 2020-2021 school year, 185,000 Mississippi students will receive P-EBT benefits because they were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch and attended a school that had a predominately hybrid or virtual schedule for at least one month of the 2020-21 school year.

To review the benefit amount eligible children in your district or school will receive for the 2020-21 school year, you can find your school on the P-EBT School list.

Benefits will be issued to eligible children at the address provided by MDE.

Some families across the state have begun to receive P-EBT cards for their children. Their cards will need to be activated.

To activate the P-EBT card for each child, call 1-866-512-5087. This phone number is printed on the back of the card.

Information regarding how to PIN each child’s card is also available in the document that arrived in the envelope with the child’s P-EBT card. Parents do not need to call the P-EBT call center to activate the card.