Can the state Department of Education still meet its goal to purchase 30% of its food from local sources by 2030?
The department spent just 6.5% on local food during the 2024-2025 school year, according to a November report, after years of struggling to source more of its food from Hawaiʻi farmers.
But DOE Food Administrator Anneliese Tanner said that goal is still within reach.
“I believe with all of the direction and the focus and the support that we have, we will be able to meet the goal,” Tanner said in an interview in March. “I think the progress we've made just in the fall semester of this year speaks to the trajectory we have ahead of us.”
The department recently started making small purchases from local farmers that are used in pilot programs at schools. Those ingredients can then become part of regular breakfast and lunch menus.
The Hawaiʻi ʻUlu Cooperative said it sold 240 pounds of ʻulu flour to the DOE last year for one of those trial runs.
“That was one of the items that was piloted last year, and it was successfully piloted,” Dana Shapiro, the co-op's CEO, said in an interview last month. “This year it's on the regular breakfast menu.”
So far this year, it's sold closer to 5,800 pounds, and said steamed frozen ʻulu and kalo are also regular ingredients on school menus.
Other ingredients are being piloted this year, too.
Part of the process to integrate new, local ingredients “ includes recipe testing, student tasting testing and piloting the products in a subset of schools,” Shapiro added.
Tanner said some procurement changes have also been made to accelerate local food purchases.
One includes changes to what she called an “all-or-none” approach that the DOE has used when it comes to food purchasing. That made it more difficult for smaller farms to contribute to the DOE, which serves about 100,000 meals every day.
“A producer would need to be able to provide us all of what we needed in order to work with us. And now we're diversifying the way that we're sourcing our food,” Tanner said.
“We now have medium-size or small-purchase contracts where we focus just on one product, like honey or vinegar or poi. And we're also now doing micro-purchases where we're connecting one farm with one school, focusing on one to two products.”
The small purchases help the department build relationships with local farmers, who can then learn how to scale up their production to fill the DOE's needs.
Other significant changes have been to personnel.
Tanner, along with Sean Tajima, assistant superintendent for the DOE's Office of Campus Operations and Support, are among the new hires helping lead the department's food procurement efforts.
They were hired approximately 6 months ago, and said there's been more internal support to improve local purchasing.
In years past, there have been frustrations with the DOE over its 30% local food purchasing goal, a mandated goal given to the department by state lawmakers in 2021.
Much of that frustration was directed at the department's leadership, particularly Randall Tanaka, former assistant superintendent of the DOE's Office of Facilities and Operations.
Tanaka was criticized for not implementing plans to increase the department's local food purchasing. He was fired in late 2023 after the DOE failed to spend around $470 million allocated by state lawmakers.
Still, food advocates and lawmakers have continued to criticize the department's approach to local food procurement.
The latest attack on the department was a state audit published last month that reiterated concerns that the DOE was “without an integrated, targeted strategy” and had poor data and analysis to support its methods.
But the audit reviewed the department's efforts between 2021 and August 2025, before Tanner and Tajima joined.
Tanner said local food purchasing is up to around 8%, and Tajima said that growth could accelerate.
“I think this is just the start of good things to come. We're proud of the increase that we made in a really short time before the regional kitchen even starts, which would be a catalyst to spike it at a quicker rate,” he said.
The DOE's central kitchen, which will process local food products, is expected to start serving students in the Leilehua-Mililani-Waialua Complex Area in the fall of 2027.
Shapiro was also optimistic about an increase in local food being served at schools.
“Signs are definitely pointing to a further increase in local purchasing,” she said. “I think a really big part of the story is that leadership matters. Bad leadership can be a death sentence to projects like this, even when there's legislative support.”
