For Questions Regarding P-EBT Please See Below

  • Only students approved for free or reduced meals (through submission of the free and reduced meal application) or who attend a CEP school are eligible for P-EBT. 

    You can check the status of payments here https://benefitsportal.dss.sc.gov/#/pebt/benefitinquiry

    DSS and SCDE have informed school districts that P-EBT cards for newly eligible K-12 students are expected to mail out after December 15, 2022. This is for students who were approved for free or reduced meals or attended a CEP school as of August 30, 2022 for the 2022-2023 school year. If your student has already received the one-time 2021-2022 Summer K-12 P-EBT payment, no additional funds will be issued.

    Questions regarding school age P-EBT can be sent to the PEBT@ed.sc.gov inbox. Questions regarding childcare P-EBT should be sent to DSS at PEBTBenefits@dss.sc.gov.

    Before sending a parent to SCDE with questions, please check their status as free or reduced within the school district. The DSS portal,  https://benefitsportal.dss.sc.gov/#/pebt/benefitinquiry, will update around December 15th for parents and SFAs to look up students. 

     

    P-EBT facts for the second round:

    1. Students must have been enrolled in a school that participated in the NSLP for the last 20 days for the 2021-22 school year to be eligible for this payment as well. 
    2. These are 1-time payments. Students that received the August payment will not receive another payment.
    3. New cards will be mailed to all eligible students. Please communicate to families they will need to wait until after December 15th to check the portal. 
    4. The application deadline to be newly eligible for P-EBT was August 16th. If you had a family complete an application in September, October, or November they will not receive a payment. We pulled data as of August 30th but that is not a date we are sharing with the public. 
    5. There are no school year payments for the 2022-23 school year. 
    6. If the date of birth is wrong in PowerSchool the district will need to provide the parent with the incorrect information so the parent can activate the P-EBT card. SCDE will not provide the incorrect date to parents. 
    7. Please do not send parents to the PEBT inbox at this time for questions about the next round of payments. They need to wait and check the portal. We will give them that exact same response. We have no access at this time to newly eligible data. 
    8. Do not give out mine, Donna’s, Karen’s, or anyone else at SCDE name or phone number regarding P-EBT. All parents should be directed to PEBT@ed.sc.gov. We do not have time to field phone calls from the entire state of SC. Please send out an email to all schools in your SFA regarding directing parents to the inbox. 
    9. P-EBT is based on Federal Law. We will not treat any student differently from other students in SC. We will not violate Federal Law because parents did not fill out meal applications last school year. 
    10. If the SFA became CEP for the 2022-23 school year that does not make all students eligible for P-EBT. The only newly added students will be DC students that were identified prior to the August 31st deadline.