President Donald Trump’s administration has abruptly canceled two federal programs that directly support local food purchases and school nutrition efforts in a budget-cutting move that is expected to hit Hawaii’s schools and families hard.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed it is terminating $660 million that schools and child care centers nationwide, including in Hawaii, depended on to buy food from local farms through the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program. This comes as Hawaii recently signed on to the USDA program in 2022, helping local farmers supply produce to public schools and bolster food security across the islands.
Adding to that economic blow, the U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday that nearly half of its workforce — about 1,300 employees — will be laid off, as agencies scramble to meet Trump’s mandate for mass government downsizing.
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, describing herself as “a proud public school graduate and a mom of public school kids,” criticized the decision Tuesday, calling it “the largest, most significant cut he’s done that hits everyone at home.”
“We knew the writing was on the wall because President Trump had made clear before he even got reelected his intentions to completely destroy the Department of Education,” she said. “Upon her being confirmed, (Education Secretary Linda McMahon) had made clear that her edict and her goal was to facilitate the dismantling of the Department of Education.”
Tokuda emphasized that the effects of the Trump administration’s recent actions will be deeply and personally felt in Hawaii, as many residents can be expected to lose their jobs, Medicaid health insurance and other benefits, and businesses suffer from extensive federal cuts, trade tariffs and other policies that will hurt the economy.
With federal grants and programs frozen or defunded, Hawaii schools and universities could see significant disruption, she said, including the loss of or reduction in research and graduate student positions, educational loan forgiveness programs, Head Start early education programs, and Pell Grants and scholarships.
Gov. Josh Green also raised alarms about what the education-related cuts could mean for Hawaii’s children and families.
“Eleven percent of our state Department of Education budget comes from the federal government. That is equivalent to 1,100 full-time workers who will be in flux, and we can’t have that,” Green said Tuesday. “These are the people that care for our kids. Not taking care of them is not an option, so we’re going to have to come up with those resources.
“With the new administration, I’m trying to find a peaceful space, best I can, to fight for Hawaii over and over again. I’m just hoping that none of these cuts become a tsunami that we can’t recover from.”
The cancellation of the Local Food for Schools program is expected to compound Hawaii’s food insecurity issues. The state’s high cost of living has made free and reduced-price school lunches a vital service, especially for the most vulnerable children.
For the 2024-2025 school year, 181 so-called Title I schools across Hawaii have a majority of students from low-income families. For many of those children, school meals are their only reliable source of nutrition.
In particular, the West side of Oahu, including areas like Nanakuli and Waianae, has some of the highest rates of students dependent on free meals. About 81.7% of students in that region rely on school meals as a key source of nutrition and as a foundation for their ability to learn. For many it is their only warm meal of the day. Similarly, in the Pahoa complex area on Hawaii island, nearly 90% of students are dependent on free and reduced-price lunch programs.
State Rep. Amy Perruso (D, Wahiawa-Whitmore Village-Mokuleia) emphasized the urgency of the situation and pointed out that bills advocating for free school meals have either stalled or been deferred in the current legislative session.
“Context is really important and is shaping legislative decision-making,” Perruso said. “At least in the House, we’re adopting a more cautious fiscal approach, which I understand the reasoning, but I think that it’s precisely in moments like these where we need to decide where we want to invest in our own communities so that we can actually become less dependent on the federal government and these kinds of situations in the future.”
She explained that the state’s dependence on federal support for farmers, food banks and local food procurement leaves it more vulnerable to the whims of federal officials, and suggested a more aggressive approach to increasing state revenues to cover the loss in federal dollars, such as raising taxes on billionaires who benefit from federal tax cuts.
