Bills to transform Hawaii’s school meals die in Senate

A handful of well- supported bills to transform student meals in Hawaii’s public schools appears to be dead for this legislative session.

The bills aimed to provide cheaper and more locally sourced meals to the nearly 170,000 public and charter school students in Hawaii, although all appear to have been blocked in the state Senate Committee on Education.

A group of related bills, House Bills 247, 248, 249 and 250, would have addressed the various roadblocks to the DOE’s Farm to School program, which was established within the state Department of Education in 2021 but is off to a slow start. House Bill 540 would have provided free meals to all enrolled public and charter school students during every school day.

The Senate’s Education Committee deferred HB 247 March 20 and HB 540 on March 22. The other bills reportedly won’t be scheduled for a hearing, effectively killing them for the session.

HB 247 would have required some state departments to procure 30% of their food locally by 2030 and require better reporting on the status of those goals. The 30% goal represents an increase for most of those departments, but it’s been a requirement for the DOE since the signing of Act 175 in 2021.

Still, Sen. Michelle Kidani (D, Mililani Town-Waipio Gentry- Royal Kunia), Education Committee chair, decided to defer HB 247.

She said that there isn’t enough time for the DOE — sometimes referred to as the state’s largest restaurant because it serves about 100,000 meals per day — to source that much food locally by 2030.

“My dilemma is, I totally support the idea, but to ask the biggest restaurant in the state of Hawaii … I don’t know how you could do that in seven years,” Kidani told the DOE during the hearing for HB 247. “My recommendation is going to be to defer, because this is such a big issue, and I don’t think we’ve given you the proper amount of time.”

The DOE reported that only 6.2% of the food it serves is sourced locally, and more than half of that is beef.

Kidani, who did not reply to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser for comment for this story, then deferred HB 540 during a committee hearing March 22 after concerns were raised about how much the free meals would cost the state.

The DOE said in testimony that at its current 50% lunch participation rate at Hawaii public schools, HB 540 would cost $63.8 million. It said that if participation jumped to 75%, that cost would more than double to $137.9 million.

Sen. Donna Mercado Kim (D, Kalihi-Fort Shafter-Red Hill), the committee’s vice chair, was concerned about the cost of the bill. She said the DOE’s list of needs is long and that funding something like universal lunches would come at the cost of another need.

“Everybody comes in to speak on different bills that cost money, but when you look at the broad picture … there’s concerns about having kids with all the school supplies that they need, having the transportation for our kids to get to the school,” Kim said at the hearing. “Preschool, early education, early college, air conditioning in the classrooms — there’s a lot of need. … Should food be at the top of the list?”

Kim did not reply to a request for comment from the Star-Advertiser.

Most of those costs would fall on the state, said Randall Tanaka, assistant superintendent for DOE’s Office of Facilities and Operations, during a hearing.

“There is evidence that a well-fed child is more productive, and the name of our game is to get them where they’re well educated, they can critically think, and food is a critical part,” he said. “It’s a tough economic decision. … I don’t have an answer for that. I don’t envy your positions for making this thing work.”

The Education Department’s cost estimate for HB 540 was significantly higher than the estimated $19 million-$44 million range that Hawaii Appleseed and other local organizations reported the free meals would cost the state, and this cost is anticipated to drop in 2024 following the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s temporary reimbursement rate hike for operators of child nutrition programs in Hawaii.

The department said in an email statement to the Star-Advertiser, “Based on the total plate cost, including food, labor, and operations, minus the federal reimbursement, (the DOE) needs at least ($63.8 million) to fund this legislation at the current meal participation volume.”

All the bills followed a similar trajectory: They originated in the House of Representatives, were supported heavily by the public and advocates for local agriculture and anti-hunger initiatives, and were opposed primarily by the DOE, which usually said the bills were difficult to implement, expensive or both.

Similarly, while Kidani and Kim both said they supported the ideas behind the deferred bills, they raised concerns about their practicality.

The death of the bills is a blow to those pointing to high rates of hunger among Hawaii’s kids that aren’t being addressed by current programs to properly feed them. Although nearly 1 in 3 children in Hawaii were food-insecure in 2020, according to a Feeding America report, fewer than 40% of Hawaii students who qualify for the national School Breakfast Program participated in it — the worst participation rate in the country.

Free and price-reduced lunches are already available for qualified students under the federal National School Lunch Program, but the income thresholds for the program omit families in Hawaii that earn too much for federal standards but not enough to live in Hawaii, where the cost of living is among the highest in the nation.

As many as 15,000 so-called “gap” students each year don’t qualify for the program, but still struggle with food insecurity, the DOE reported.

Killing a bill like HB 540 based on cost alone is problematic, said Dennis Chase, program manager of the Hawaii Farm to School Hui.

“Many of the legislators and many of the people in the DOE are looking at it as one number, the percentage of the budget spent on locally grown or raised food, and how do we increase that one number by making as few changes as possible to the rest of our operation?” Chase said.

“I think Farm to School specifically — and food systems and food security in Hawaii in general — is so much bigger, so much wider than just that one number,” he added.

Proponents of the DOE’s Farm to School program hope it will provide healthier and more locally produced food to kids while also giving the state’s smallest farmers a consistent market to sell their produce.

Tanaka and the DOE have shown little interest in the program and have pushed the construction of centralized kitchens to feed students and reach the DOE’s 30% local food procurement goal by 2030.

Why Kidani has not scheduled hearings for the other Farm to School bills is unclear, but some suggest that the Senate’s members trust in the DOE’s leadership on an issue that they didn’t prioritize this session.

“My sense was that there’s wasn’t a lot of energy focused on that. … Maybe they just don’t think food security is a priority,” said Rep. Amy Perruso (D, Wahiawa-Whitmore Village- Mokuleia), primary author of the Farm to School bills. “I didn’t really hear an explanation from them during the hearing about why they’re not hearing the other bills.”

The department, meanwhile, for years has been a source of frustration for local farming and healthy-food advocates as well as key lawmakers in the House like Perruso.

Perruso, other House members and advocates have repeatedly asked Tanaka and the DOE as a whole to communicate better with them, to publicly release detailed plans to reach their local food procurement goals and data on their progress, although they say the department continues to leave them in the dark.