Bills to transform Hawaiʻi’s school meals die in Senate

A handful of well- supported bills to transform student meals in Hawaiʻi’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 Hawaiʻi, 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 HB247 March 20 and HB540 on March 22. The other bills reportedly won’t be scheduled for a hearing, effectively killing them for the session.

HB247 would have required some state departments to procure 30 percent of their food locally by 2030 and require better reporting on the status of those goals. The 30 percent 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.