The Hawai‘i Department of Education is lagging far behind a state deadline to bring more local foods into school lunches, a state audit has found.
The Department of Agriculture began a “Farm to School” program in 2015, as part of an effort to promote local food production and improve student health. By 2021, that program was transferred to the Department of Education along with a goal: to ensure than 10% of school meals be made of locally sourced food by 2025, and 30% by 2030.
But by 2025, the DOE had seemingly failed to reach that first goal.
An audit of the program released Thursday found that it was impossible to quantify how much local food was actually being sourced for the program. However, between 2023 and 2024, only 5.4% of DOE’s total food expenses — about $4.4 million out of more than $82 million — was spent on local food.
By the end of this year, DOE benchmarks suggest that the department’s school lunches should be composed of at least 18% local products.
Even as the department’s food expenses have ballooned over the last five years — DOE reportedly spent $50 million on food during the 2021-2022 school year, the first year of full in-person instruction after the Covid school closures — local food expenses have not grown commensurately. Local food made up 6.2%, or $3.1 million of the 2021-2022 food budget, and for the 2022-2023 school year, that percentage shrunk to 6.1%, or $3.9 million out of the $64 million food budget.
The audit concluded that the program had very little departmental oversight. A Farm to School Coordinator the DOE hired in 2023 — unnamed in the report — only took “negligible” actions toward advancing the program, delivering “late, incomplete, inaccurate and, therefore, unreliable” reports about the program’s progress.
That Coordinator reportedly told the state Auditor that he thought when he was hired that he had the responsibility to meet the mandated deadlines, but he later concluded that he was merely “the leader of gathering information and making reports,” with only the authority “to ask and suggest.”
Meanwhile, at the individual school level, cafeteria managers who procure food for school lunches often had few options to purchase locally sourced products. A system by the U.S. Department of Agriculture — the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Order/Receipt System, or FFAVORS — is meant to help schools procure locally sourced produce, aided by USDA funding.
However, the audit reported that DOE didn’t even spend all of its USDA credits: in the 2023-2024 school year, the DOE received $5.5 million in USDA credits, but left $1 million unspent, which were subsequently redistributed among the states.
At the state level, DOE maintains lists of distributors of produce, dairy products and ground beef. But those foods are not themselves necessarily sourced from in-state: the audit found that those lists make no differentiation between local and imported items.
In any event, DOE’s record system does not track whether a given food purchase is local, and the audit cast doubt on whether the information that is tracked can be trusted. Annual reports of Farm to School spending showed discrepancies with DOE spending reports to the legislature, with those discrepancies ranging from $700,000 in the 2023-2024 school year, to an $11.2 million gap from the previous year.
DOE could have rectified these reporting gaps using a new tracking system, called Titan, that went live in 2024. But Titan’s rollout was wracked with problems: the audit found that many cafeteria managers never used the new system at all, while those that did use the system complained of having been insufficiently trained.
Eventually, the state found that DOE had improperly procured Titan, leading to more than $20 million in withheld federal reimbursements until, in May 2025, Titan was discontinued, leaving cafeteria managers to continue to document their purchases on index cards.
The audit ultimately concluded that DOE never appeared to prioritize meeting the mandated deadlines and never made any intentional effort to increase spending on local produce.
However, the audit also reported that local distributors don’t believe the 30% goal is attainable by 2030. Produce such as broccoli and carrots simply don’t grow well in Hawai‘i, and distributors reportedly believe that local farmers cannot produce at a scale commensurate with DOE’s needs.
DOE responded to the audit in broad agreement with a series of recommendations for more formal organization and strategic planning. DOE claimed that it is in the process of transitioning to standardized menus in the 2026-2027 school year, along with electronic food ordering systems to prioritize local food purchases and ensure that all USDA credits are used.
Aloha State Daily reached out to DOE for further comment.
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