New Hawaii law to provide free lunch for needy public school students

Thousands of public school students from low-income families will get free school lunches over the next two school years, while new rules also will go into effect designed to reduce cancellations of school bus routes that occurred in each of the past two school years.

And statewide boys and girls surfing teams will be created, perhaps beginning next school year.

The bills passed by the Legislature were signed into law Friday during a ceremony at the governor’s mansion, Washington Place.

Two other bills that Gov. Josh Green signed into law are designed to resolve differences in how locally produced food gets to public schools, youth campuses, public hospitals and prisons; and another requires the University of Hawaii to charge resident tuition for anyone who graduated from a Hawaii high school and pursues an undergraduate degree at any UH campus.

Friday’s gathering included schoolchildren, teachers and advocates to help Hawaii students get to school, get fed and be better prepared to learn.

First lady Jaime Green, who pushed for providing free lunches for needy children, grew emotional as she talked about Hawaii children who don’t always know when their next meal will come.

“It is so important to make sure our kids are fed and don’t go hungry,” she said, choking up, as the crowd supported her with applause.

During COVID-19, when schools were closed and the Department of Education turned to remote learning, DOE officials also had to figure out how to get meals out to children across the islands, sometimes in remote districts, who relied on reduced-price lunches.

“We saw the real need, and now, even that COVID is over, we are still struggling, our families are struggling,” Green said. “If students aren’t hungry, they can better focus on their studies, extracurricular activities and personal growth.”

So with Gov. Green’s signature Friday on Senate Bill 1300, students who are eligible for reduced-price lunches will receive them for free beginning in the fall.

And in the subsequent school year, schoolchildren from working, low-income families who earn below 300% of the federal poverty level also will get free lunches.

Significantly, schools are now prohibited from denying a meal to any student who cannot pay.

State Rep. Justin Woodson (D, Kahului-Puunene) chairs the House Education Committee and said legislators heard “heart-wrenching stories” of students who waited in the back of the lunch line only to have their food trays taken away.

“They were past embarrassment,” Woodson said, and sometimes hung around rubbish cans looking for discarded food to eat.

“This should not be in the state of Hawaii,” Woodson said. “This reflects our values.”

State Sen. Michelle Kidani (D, Mililani Town-Waipio Gentry-­Royal Kunia) chairs the Senate Education Committee and authored the bill providing free school lunches.

She and her siblings struggled with food uncertainty as schoolchildren.

Today, Kidani said, teachers in her district stock their desks with snacks for their students who are in similar financial situations, Kidani said.

“It’s not just about food,” she said. “It’s about equity.”

No child, Kidani said, should sit in class wondering when they’ll next eat.

The bill appropriates more than $3.3 million to the Department of Education over the two school years to cover the cost of free meals for students of low-income families.

“That means all the families living paycheck to paycheck,” Green said.

House Bill 862 enshrines into state law emergency proclamations that Green issued at the start of the past two school years after the DOE abruptly canceled dozens of bus routes on multiple islands days before the start of the school year, disrupting commutes for hundreds of families.

The DOE now has time before the next school year to find companies with vans and other nontraditional buses that can fill routes.

The new law also requires DOE staff to accompany students between drop-off and pickup locations to ensure student safety.

The DOE — like the rest of the nation — still faces a shortage of drivers with commercial driver’s licenses.

But combined, the changes are aimed at ensuring that students get to school, get fed and become better prepared to learn, Green and legislators said at Friday’s bill signing.

The event took on a far less serious tone before Green signed House Bill 133 into law providing $685,870 for each of the next two fiscal years to establish interscholastic surfing.

Out of Hawaii’s five high school athletic leagues, only Maui has a surfing league, while individual high schools do have surf clubs.

State schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that each league will have to figure out how to proceed, but he expects that some will create boys and girls teams during the next school year in a state that gave surfing to the world.

Each athlete will need to get certified as a junior lifeguard, perhaps over this summer ahead of new teams and leagues, House Majority Leader Sean Quinlan (D, Waialua-Haleiwa-Punaluu) told the Star-Advertiser.

In Hawaii, drownings among local children ages 1 to 15 represent the leading cause of death for their age group.

The creation of surf leagues was pushed by advocates for water safety who argued they will encourage student surfers to learn how to better protect themselves in the ocean.

The new funding for Hawaii surf leagues follows years of unsuccessful efforts, and Green could not readily offer an explanation.

“It’s not exactly clear to me why it took us this long,” he said.

Quinlan, who represents the North Shore and pushed for the leagues, said the next world champion or Olympic surfing gold medalist could get their competitive start on a future Hawaii high school surf team.

Or, Quinlan joked, it could inspire the next generation of “mediocre surfers … because I am one of you.”