Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — The Department of Human Social Services has made several upgrades to the P-EBT benefits system over the weekend to rectify the concerns raised by parents.

This was confirmed by Director Muavaefa'atasi John Edward Suisala in response to questions from Samoa News.

Last week the director confirmed the registration was open for the second round of the P-EBT benefits, however parents were unable to register with the online portal.

The system came back with an error message each time a parent would attempt to register.

 “Our system’s administrator also made several upgrades to the system over the weekend to make it more user-friendly based on screenshots of error messages sent in by users.” 

The P-EBT benefits are for families whose children were enrolled in ECE through grade 12 in all public and private schools during School Year 2021-2022 that ended June 10, 2022.

It was funded through an $8.8 million grant from the Food and Nutrition Service under the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for school year 2021-2022 on March 22, 2022, while administrative funding to pay for implementing the program was approved on June 20, 2022.

American Samoa’s P-EBT state plan covers 76 days from February 22, 2022, to June 10, 2022, when schools were closed and some were later reopened on May 2, 2022, on a hybrid learning schedule due to the first community spread of the coronavirus in the Territory, according to information provided.

Muavaefa’atasi says the school enrollment records from DOE for all public schools have already been uploaded into the P-EBT public portal. 

 “We are still waiting for enrollment records for the private schools to be uploaded by DOE as they are working on cleaning them to meet the format requirements.

 “If parents or legal guardians of children in private schools register now, the system will send a message that there is no match with the school records because these have not been uploaded.”

The director told Samoa News those registrations will remain pending in the system and they will be automatically processed as soon as these records have been uploaded. 

An email will be sent to the parents/legal guardians with an update once their registrations have been processed. 

 “It is crucial for parents or legal guardians to input their names and their children's names in the system as they appear in the school enrollment records as the system conducts automated approvals by matching the names being registered to the enrollment records embedded in the system.

 “If the names of the parents, legal guardians, or students do not match the names in the enrollment records (or the dates of birth do not match with the school enrollment records), the system will ask the user to call the ASNAP [American Samoa Nutrition Assistance Program] office for further information to complete their applications. 

“The P-EBT public portal went live on Wednesday, July 20, 2022. To date, we have received over 3,120 registrations and this number continues to increase.

 “We encourage users to call the ASNAP office if they encounter any problems and the staff will try and assist them over the telephone. 

 “The ASNAP is experiencing high volumes of calls so it is important for parents and legal guardians to be patient and call again.”

The DHSS and the Department of Education will issue P-EBT benefits through the ASNAP in the form of food stamp coupons.

The program will provide up to $629 in food coupons for each child or $8.28 per day for up to 76 days when school children were on virtual learning from home and lost access to free meals at school.