The V.I. Department of Education ran out of milk in late March, after its supplier shut its doors, and students will have to wait for another two weeks or so for a new shipment to arrive, according to Education officials.

St. Thomas Dairies closed abruptly March 1. The last shipment of milk was delivered to schools on March 4 and the milk ran out around the third week of March, according to Education Department Public Information Officer Ananta Pancham.

"Once we received notification from Trans-Caribbean Dairy Corp (St. Thomas Dairies) about their closing, we reached out to other possible suppliers, including local grocery stores, companies in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Department of Agriculture," Pancham said in an email Thursday.

Acting Education Commissioner Donna Frett-Gregory met late last month with representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which will be supplying the milk needed for the rest of the school year.

Officials recently emailed Frett-Gregory saying USDA’s Farm Service Agency has signed a contract for the delivery of six truckloads containing a total of 427,680 half-pints of USDA UHT milk from Gossner Food, which is due to arrive around the second week in May, according to a statement from Education. Another shipment of about 143,000 half-pints of milk is still being confirmed and is expected to cover the department through the end of summer.

The school system was able to purchase enough milk to last out the rest of the school year and cover summer programs using federal Commodity Entitlement Funds, Pancham said. "The USDA’s Schools/Child Nutrition Commodity Programs provides cash reimbursements for meals served in the schools and we were able to use some of that reimbursement money to purchase the milk," she said.

Adding to the delays, the newly purchased milk was being produced in the USDA’s Northeast District, which is outside the Mid-Atlantic regional office that serves the territory. The Northeast District was having some warehousing issues, Pancham said.

The federal government is helping to secure a new supplier for the upcoming school year and has granted a waiver to its usual supply rules in the meantime, according to the department’s statement.