The Department of Education revealed a startling statistic in January: the cost of making a school lunch in Hawaii is now close to $9. Following their recovery from sticker shock, lawmakers and activists asked a fair question: Why are school lunches so costly?
The public still has no response after eight months. The administration has yet to release comprehensive information concerning the high cost of feeding pupils, despite criticism from lawmakers.
The department may not even gather campus-level data on lunch expenditures at individual schools, let alone disseminate it. It hasn’t broken down how much the state spends on lunchtime staples like milk and fresh veggies.
Since DOE is having trouble making ends meet with its lunch program and has asked the Legislature for an extra $40 million over the last two years on top of the state and federal funds it already receives for its meal program, lawmakers say schools must explain what is driving up the costs.
Although current lunch rates are substantially below the cost of preparing school meals, Hawaii law mandates that the education department charge families half of that amount. In order to prevent rising costs for families, state lawmakers intervened with funding when DOE sought to raise meal rates progressively over the following four years in January.
By 2028, elementary and middle school lunches will cost $4.75, according to DOE’s proposal. For lunches, high school students would pay $5.
Breaking Down The Numbers
Over 18 million meals are served annually to students on 258 DOE campuses. Legislators allocated around $50 million this spring to support the school feeding program for the ensuing two years.
Although the online reports only track the total amount of money coming in and going out of the meals program, the department does produce quarterly financial reports for its food services sector. The program received $108 million in student contributions and state and federal subsidies during the third quarter of the 2024–25 academic year, but it also spent about $123 million on wages, food, and other costs.
This spring, a representative from the superintendent’s office released a one-page financial report that provided more detailed information on the spending and earnings of the meal program in response to a Civil Beat public documents request for school and state-level lunch expenses. In 2023–24, the department spent about $81 million on food, while about 40% of the budget was allocated to employee pay and benefits.
What goes into a $9 school meal, for instance, or how much the department spent on particular ingredients or drinks, or what cafeteria goods cost the agency over $5.6 million in 2024, were not well explained. Although the department’s yearly report to the Legislature includes more thorough estimates of its purchases of local ingredients, this expenditure accounts for barely 5% of the school food budget.
The DOE also stated that it lacked records of schools’ yearly financial reports for campus lunch programs in response to Civil Beat’s request. Requests for interviews about the availability of school food data and the growing cost of lunches were not answered by the department.
The lack of regular tracking and reporting from schools worries Jesse Cooke, vice president of investments and analytics at Ulupono Initiative. According to him, he hasn’t regularly seen data that breaks down the expenses of meal programs at specific schools, which makes it more difficult for the department and lawmakers to determine what’s causing meal expenditures to rise and how programs may run more effectively.
“You need pretty quick numbers when you’re trying to make decisions, trying to make something more efficient,” Cooke said. They aren’t examining the numbers of particular schools.
The federal government has also criticized the education department for not gathering enough data. According to Daniela Spoto, director of food equity at the Hawai i Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice, officials rejected Hawai i’s 2015 request for an increase in federal funding for school meals because the department was unable to provide sufficient information on the cost of their lunches.
According to Spoto, historically, they were only able to offer what they did here. These are our prices and the total quantity of meals we serve.
This spring, lawmakers passed two resolutions requesting that the department provide a comprehensive analysis of its meal programs, including the price of supplies, beverages, and ingredients. According to the resolutions, DOE does not currently have a procedure for disclosing and publishing such expenses.
According to one resolution, it is crucial to make sure that appropriate reporting procedures are in place to offer transparency regarding the expenses associated with preparing school meals.
DOE officials have sent conflicting messages to lawmakers over the easily accessible data, despite claiming they publish enough information to support hiking lunch prices.
Sue Kirchstein, the administrator of the Interim School Food Services Branch, stated during one hearing that DOE already gathers and disseminates information on the price of foods and other components used in school meals. However, according to another official, the DOE’s communications staff was unable to produce the paper Kirchstein referred to during the hearing, and the agency does not gather data with the degree of detail legislators were seeking.
During another hearing this spring, former Deputy Superintendent Dean Uchida stated that the department had not finished a thorough analysis of the factors driving up meal prices, aside than examining growing inflation rates. This statement drew harsh criticism from MPs.
During the session, Sen. Troy Hashimoto stated, “You should be looking at it, and maybe there is a different way that you can do things.” But unless you undertake the analysis, you won’t know that.
Whether the department is working on a cost analysis for the Legislature has not been disclosed. In the run-up to the next legislative session, in late 2025 or early 2026, DOE will publish any reports it sends to lawmakers.
