Technology Upgrade Could Feed Up to 60,000 More Kids Next Summer
Dustin Hare | September 22, 2026
Summer is the hungriest time of year for kids, as school meals go away for several months. To combat this spike in food insecurity among children, the federal government created the Summer EBT program, also known as SUN Bucks, in 2024. But in Kansas, only half of eligible kids are currently enrolled.
Of those who are not participating, nearly half could be automatically enrolled by fixing a relatively inexpensive technological issue. This one-time $400,000 expense would provide food for up to 60,000 more Kansas children each summer.
Summer EBT is a federal program that helps families with school-aged children offset some of the costs of buying food over the summer break. The program is available for families making up to 185% of the federal poverty level (FPL). Families who qualify receive a one-time payment of $120 for each qualifying child. This summer, the program provided food to more than 133,000 Kansas kids and brought approximately $16 million into our state’s economy. Participation in the Summer EBT program has remained steady at around 133,000 students over the past two years, but tens of thousands more Kansas kids are eligible for the program.
Children can be enrolled in Summer EBT in one of two ways: families filling out an application at school or children being auto-enrolled. Most families enter the program through auto-enrollment.
Auto-enrollment is possible because the income threshold to qualify for Summer EBT is higher than or equal to the threshold required to qualify for Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and free and reduced-price lunches (FRPL). If a student’s income has already been verified to qualify for one of these programs, then the Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCF) knows that they also qualify for Summer EBT. Auto-enrollment reduces administrative costs because families can be enrolled without needing staff to review applications.
Currently, DCF cannot auto-enroll the Medicaid population into Summer EBT because they don’t have access to the data they’d need to determine which children automatically qualify. DCF can auto-enroll students who participate in SNAP and TANF because they already have data from those programs in their system, but FRPL and Medicaid are administered by different agencies, the Kansas Department of Education (KSDE) and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), respectively. Those agencies’ technological systems have not been set up to share enrollment data with DCF.
In January 2025, DCF estimated it would cost $300,000 to $400,000 to upgrade their technology to allow for the FRPL and Medicaid populations to be auto-enrolled. In August 2025, DCF received federal funds from the Summer EBT Technology Grant, and DCF confirmed they were using the funding to address this technology issue. Since then, details surrounding the tech upgrades have been sparse.
Since August 2025, more than 18,000 Kansas children have been disenrolled from SNAP. While DCF has not shared the exact cause for such a high increase of children losing SNAP, it is not likely due to children no longer needing food assistance, but rather that children and their families are experiencing more administrative burdens than one year ago.
These 18,000 Kansas kids have less food to eat, especially as they will no longer be auto-enrolled in Summer EBT next summer, further exacerbating food insecurity among this population.
With a simple, relatively inexpensive technology upgrade, the Legislature can take action to ensure more kids get fed once the current school year ends next spring.
Leaders across Kansas should be doing everything in their power to ensure kids are getting the food that is necessary for their growth and development. Kansas can work to address rising food insecurity by prioritizing this Summer EBT technology fix for which DCF has already received federal funding.
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