WASHINGTON–Nearly two months into the school year, thousands of returning warriors are still waiting for their education benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs; benefits desperately needed to pay for tuition, housing and books. Timely payments have been delayed because of backlogs caused by the new program, the Post-9/11 GI Bill.
After our interview, Derek Blumke, executive director of Student Veterans of America took a moment to explain the details of the “old” and “new” GI Bills. (Jessica Harbin/MNS)
Derek Blumke, the executive director of Student Veterans of America, has been hearing complaints from a number of his member chapters about this issue. As an organization partnering with the Department of Veterans Affairs, Student Veterans of America has been in close contact with the VA on this issue.
Blumke said, “When it came time for the first checks to start running, and for the fall semester to begin, the VA was just kind of scrambling to get things together and this is where the delays are coming from. You only have so many VA employees able to process that paperwork, and as of now they are doing it all manually.”
Since realizing the magnitude of their backlog problem, the Department of Veterans Affairs has begun offering up to $3,000 in emergency funding to program participants.
But for Adam L’Episcopo, a student veteran at American University in Washington, even this emergency funding is out of reach. Because of an unexplained delay in the processing of his application, L’Episcopo doesn’t even have the paperwork to get the money he so desperately needs to pay his rent and bills.