Parents who missed $335 grants will get another chance

The extension for the state's "extra credit" grants is included in $2-billion-plus coronavirus pandemic relief bill.

Posted 4:54 p.m. Feb 4, 2021 — Updated 5:29 p.m. Feb 4, 2021

Travis Fain

, WRAL statehouse reporter

RALEIGH, N.C. — Parents with school-aged children who missed out last year on a $335 grant from the state will get another chance at the money under a bill that passed the House unanimously Thursday.

Senate Bill 36 has more than $2 billion in federal coronavirus funding in it, with the bulk going to K-12 schools. But there's also a deadline extension in the measure for low-income families and other parents who missed out on the state's "extra credit" grant late last year because of a tax software glitch.

These grants, meant to offset some of the costs of a shift to online schooling, were part of legislation the General Assembly passed last year. They were supposed to go out automatically for most people, but because of a problem with some companies' tax preparation software, which made it seem like taxpayers didn't have a child 16 or younger, tens of thousands of people may have missed out on the money.

Others missed out because they didn't make enough money to file a state tax return, and they missed deadlines – an initial one in October and a second in December after a court-ordered extension – to apply for the grant. That deadline, and the deadline to amend tax returns to address the glitch, is extended to May 31 under this bill.

The new application and amendment process will be laid out by the state Department of Revenue and announced after Gov. Roy Cooper signs this bill into law, which he is expected to do quickly.

It's not clear how many people still qualify for the grant, but there's more than $80 million left to cover those costs, out of $440 million the legislature set aside initially. The Department of Revenue said some 70,000 filers may have been impacted by the software glitch, which affected line 10a of their 2019 returns.

About 26,000 people amended those returns ahead of an Oct. 15 deadline last year.

Lower-income families who have to raise their hands for the grant generally make less than $10,000 a year for an individual or $20,000 for a married couple. When the initial application deadline passed, the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy estimated 200,000 families missed out, most of them because they didn't know about the program.

The center sued, successfully, to extend the deadline into December.

The grants are not per child but per family, if the family has at least one child who was 16 or younger in 2019.

In addition to the grant extension and $1.6 billion for schools, Senate Bill 36 includes hundreds of millions of dollars for coronavirus vaccine distribution, broadband internet expansion and some $700 million in rental and utility assistance.

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