By Sam Elliott
National legislation first passed in 2010 has put the Hamilton Southeastern School District in the position of needing to raise its weighted average lunch price by 10 cents before next school year or else risk losing out on millions of dollars in federal reimbursements.
“The Dept. of Education is requiring all schools who participate in the National School Lunch Program to adjust their weighted average meal prices for next year,” HSE Schools Busines Manager Cecilie Nunn said. “What has happened in the past and the reason they’re requiring schools to do this is that there were some schools that were using the reimbursement they received from their free meals to kind of supplement their paid meals, so maybe they were keeping their paid meal prices a little lower than they should have been. That’s not happening here, but we’re still required to follow these requirements. Part of the reason it’s not happening here is because our free and reduced percentages are lower than some other districts.”
The district staff’s recommendation to the school board at its May 25 meeting was to increase HSE’s weighted average meal price by 10 cents to $2.71. The added 50 cents per week per student translates to an additional $18 over the course of the school year, Nunn projected.
“Although we prefer to not raise prices, if we don’t we could lose our reimbursement from the National School Lunch Program, which was almost $2 million in 2015, so it’s significant,” Nunn said. “If we were to lose that, our meal prices would have to go up more than an extra dollar.
“Eventually we have to get to a weighted average meal price of $2.78, which is the difference between what we get for our free meals reimbursement and what we get for our paid meals,” she added. “They reevaluate that every year, so it’s very likely we’ll be back in the future making future adjustments.”
The school board begrudgingly approved the measure, resulting in meal prices for kindergarten through sixth grade students being $2.50 next school year, and meals for seventh through 12th graders will be $2.65.
“I just don’t agree with the federal government dictating to the local community and I cannot support this,” school board member Sylvia Shepler said.
While federal government legislation is the cause for the price increase, the additional revenue generated will stay in HSE Schools.
“We are paying for the replacement and service of equipment from the food service fund, we pay for a portion of our utilities and the additional revenue we’re going to generate will allow us to continue to do that,” Nunn said. “It also will allow us to continue offering very healthy food options to our students. We offer lots of fresh fruits and veggies, whole grains, lean meats — those are more expensive than more processed options. This recommendation allows for the purchase of those food options.”
