At Tuesday’s School Board meeting, board members are set to increase full-pay lunch prices by 25 cents for all grade levels; free and reduced rates will not be impacted.
Each year the state United States Department of Agriculture reviews lunch prices and determines if school districts need to increase their prices for school lunch meals, based on reimbursement for the free and reduced lunch program.
“The value of a meal is $2.95,” said Jim Loyed, manager of financial services at the district. “The feds are saying ‘You need to charge a paid kid enough to equal what we’re giving you for a free kid.’”
The district is reimbursed $2.95 from the state per free-lunch student. However, the district will consider an increase to less than that amount. District officials didn’t want too steep of a hike and they wanted to keep the math simple; increasing the charge by 25 cents allows meal payments to break in even 25-cent increments.
Bay District has avoided raising meal prices every year, according to Loyed.
The school’s contract with private food service company Chartwells has nothing to do with it, officials said.
“We’ll probably go through the calculation again in three or four years and the state will say you got to raise your price,” Loyed said.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average cost of milk has gone up 23 cents per gallon from March last year to the same month this year.
And for the new federal public school diet, oranges and tomatoes have gone up 23 cents and 14 cents per pound, respectively. Meanwhile, bananas and apples have decreased in costs.
“We’re not driving this, the feds are driving it,” Loyed said. “They go up on the cost of meal reimbursement because they realize the cost of everything is going up; why wouldn’t you go up at some point on paid meals?”
The highest amount the state can force school districts to increase costs at any one time is 10 cents. If approved at Tuesday’s School Board meeting, prices would have increased $1 since 2001.
The board meeting will be held at 1 p.m. in the
Proposed lunch prices for the 2014-2015 school year:
Elementary, $2.50 (increase of 25 cents)
Secondary, $2.75(increase of 25 cents)
Adult, $3.50