Military

VA Scrambles To Get GI Bill Checks Out

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published October 1, 2009 at 3:00 AM PDT

This story was published more than 15 years ago.

The Veterans Administration has missed its October 1 deadline to issue checks to students enrolled under the new G.I. Bill. The Agency plans to open the doors of its Mission Valley Headquarters tomorrow morning to issue emergency checks.

The VA has failed to process the applications for benefits under the new Post-9/11 G.I. Bill in time. Students who relied on the money to pay the rent are still waiting for a check.

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For the last week the VA has been scrambling to come up with a stop-gap solution.

San Diego Congressman Bob Filner said the VA has known about the deadline for months. He said it's a bureaucratic problem.

"We're going to try to get emergency money in the hands of students immediately," Filner said. " And then fix this problem so that everybody -the universities and the students- get their checks on time "

More than 100 students are enrolled at UCSD under the new G.I. bill, more than 300 at SDSU. The new Post-9/11 G.I. bill is more generous than the Montgomery G.I. bill, and more than 250,000 people have applied for the benefit nationwide.

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.