Why Can’t We Feed Keiki Local Food?

by Tom Yamachika, President, Tax Foundation Hawaii

For some time now, our Department of Education has been under a legislative mandate to provide local ingredients to our schools so we can feed them to our kids.

And, also for some time now, federal money has been available to pay for this. It’s called a Local Food for Schools grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the amount of the grant is $650,000.

But when we got the money, not only did our DOE not spend it, but a memo went out from its central office to all schools directing them NOT to apply for any of the funding.  (By the way, this memo came from a gentleman who, as we reported earlier, was connected to an initiative by DOE to lapse nearly $900 million in funding that the Legislature already had appropriated towards school facilities improvement, and soon afterwards found himself without a job.)

On top of that, there is another federal program, the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, that gives our schools between $1.5 million and $2 million a year to buy fresh fruits and vegetables to feed our kids. According to Civil Beat, in fiscal years 2020-2022 more than a million dollars, per year, was unused. This, of course, is highly frustrating to members of our Congressional delegation who fight hard for the money only to see the DOE acting like it doesn’t want the funding.

Okay, so why can’t we feed our kids local ingredients like fresh fruits and vegetables?

Is it because our DOE staff don’t know how to deal with the ingredients, perhaps?  Apparently, part of the snafu leading to not touching the federal money was, according to a letter from Superintendent Keith Hayashi, a “misunderstanding” between the Hawaii Child Nutrition Program and the School Food Services Branch, which are both under the DOE umbrella, leading to recipes being developed without sufficient SFSB input.  HCNP folks apparently knew how to use the ingredients and went around to various schools showing staff how to handle the ingredients. But SFSB has the responsibility to approve the recipes so that they fall within federal nutrition guidelines.  

In other words, we have a turf war.

This, of course, raises legitimate questions about why we have two different governmental subunits in place with overlapping responsibilities. The worst of all scenarios, which seems to be what is happening now, is that the two units fight each other, meaning that taxpayers have to pay for both units and nothing gets done. Can we look at the obvious solution, merging the two units together?

One of the problems with a big, sprawling bureaucracy like we have in the DOE is the occurrence of overlapping or duplicative subunits. One might know of the other’s existence.  It’s quite possible that both are doing the same or similar efforts toward the common goal.  This might be good if they are doing different tasks.  But it’s not good if they are spending taxpayer resources to duplicate the same tasks or research.

Okay, legislators wielding the budget axe.  You know what to do.

And while we’re at it, who thinks this is the only place within DOE where there is duplication of effort or other wasted energy at taxpayer expense? 

(I vote no.)