Hawaii audit calls local school food push a 'structural disaster'

Hawaii’s Department of Education has failed to track which food purchases came from local sources, lacked functioning software to monitor spending, and fell back on handwritten ledgers — even as state lawmakers pressed the agency to dramatically expand the share of locally grown food in school meals, a state audit released Thursday found.

The Hawaii Office of the Auditor called the department’s approach “haphazard” and strongly questioned whether the agency can meet a Legislature-mandated goal to spend 30% of its food budget on locally sourced food by 2030.

The audit, which covers a program that farm-to-school advocates have lobbied to reform for years, found the department’s centralized-kitchen expansion plan — expected to cost $130 million — amounts to “simple arithmetic unsupported by anything more than high hopes,” with no detailed accounting of how the agency will secure enough local product to meet school demand.

Hawaii’s Department of Education failed for years to track which of its food purchases came from local sources, lacked functioning software to monitor spending, and fell back on handwritten ledgers — even as state lawmakers pressed the agency to dramatically expand locally grown food in school meals, a state audit released Thursday found.

The Hawaii Office of the Auditor called the department’s approach “haphazard” and strongly questioned whether the agency can reach a Legislature-mandated goal of spending 30% of its food budget on locally sourced food by 2030.

“This report just crystallizes what we’ve known for a really long time,” said Daniela Spoto, deputy director at Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice, whose organization has lobbied for years for an overhaul of the department’s food services branch.

A Record-Keeping Breakdown

The audit identified failures running from the school cafeteria to the state level. Cafeteria managers kept handwritten ledgers for monthly food purchases and stock-taking, while the food services branch tracked only total food costs without distinguishing local from imported products. Managers were not told which products were locally sourced and had no consistent way to report which purchases were local.

As a result, the department had to rely on its vendors to determine how much of school meals were locally sourced — an arrangement auditors said reflected a lack of oversight and guidance from state-level leaders.

The department’s financial data was also inconsistent. Annual legislative reports said schools spent $64 million on food in 2023, but an internal office put the figure at more than $75 million, the audit said.

The department’s foundational planning assumptions also proved flawed. Officials had believed milk purchases alone would allow the department to meet its initial benchmark of spending 10% of its food budget on locally sourced goods by 2025. The department did not realize until after the 2023-24 school year that local milk made up only 0.5% of schools’ meal budgets.

Federal Funds Left on the Table

Schools left $1 million in federal Fresh Fruit and Vegetable funding unspent in 2023-24, nearly 20% of the department’s allotment, the audit found. The following year, the department failed to use $913,000 of the program’s funding. One school failed to spend any of its $16,000 appropriation; another received no funding at all.

A $2.3 million meal-tracking software system — purchased through what the audit described as an improper procurement process — was used as intended by fewer than 130 of the nearly 200 cafeteria managers. The department discontinued the software in spring 2025 and had reverted to paper ledgers by the time auditors completed their review.

School Food Program Administrator Anneliese Tanner, who joined the department less than a year ago, said the agency recently awarded the software contract to a new vendor and is developing a training plan, though no implementation date has been set.

The department is now tracking the federal produce program on a monthly basis, Tanner said, and is on track to spend the $5.3 million it received in federal funding this year.

Centralized Kitchen Plans Draw Skepticism

The department has staked its hopes for meeting the 30% local-food mandate on a network of seven planned centralized kitchens it says could convert local ingredients into up to 172,000 meals a day across the state. Ground was broken earlier this year on the first facility, in Whitmore Village on Oʻahu; construction is expected to cost $130 million, and the completed kitchen is projected to serve up to 60,000 meals per day.

The audit dismissed those plans as offering “nothing more than simple arithmetic unsupported by anything more than high hopes,” citing a failure to detail how the department will work with local farmers to produce sufficient food to supply the kitchens.

More broadly, the agency’s long-term plans “seem more professions of faith than statements of fact,” auditors said.

Rep. Amy Perruso, who represents Central Oʻahu, said agency officials and lawmakers made broad assumptions about how the regional kitchens could solve the program’s shortcomings.

“This is so damning,” Perruso said. “Frankly, it’s an indictment not only of the DOE and maybe the Department of Ag, but the Legislature. We’ve also dropped the ball.”

Officials Point to Steps Forward

Tanner said the audit provides a useful starting point and that the department is implementing some of its 20 recommendations. The agency has shifted its produce procurement approach to allow local farmers and small businesses to supply food in smaller quantities, rather than requiring vendors to fulfill a full supply.

“If there’s availability of a product, we’re taking it in the amount that it’s available, and then scaling from there,” Tanner said.

A recent partnership with a local farm now supplies microgreens to a single school in Kāneʻohe. Cafeteria managers will receive order guides specifying which products are locally produced, Tanner said, and menus planned for next year have been developed around what local food will be available.

Superintendent Keith Hayashi said in his written response to the audit that the department will complete all recommendations by 2028 or take action on an annual basis.

The department requested 13 positions to support farm-to-school initiatives and nearly $1.5 million to cover rising food costs in its fiscal year 2027 budget request. Both were denied in the governor’s budget.

Advocates said the state Agriculture Department — which could help farmers scale up production to meet school demand — also lacks the funding and staffing to play that role, leaving the interagency collaboration auditors called essential without a clear path forward.

“What the report brings up to me is how we need to build our collaborative muscles between the agencies. We can’t afford to fail,” said Amanda Shaw, the state’s statewide food systems coordinator. “And we can’t afford to do it in siloes.”