Seminole schools to hike lunch prices
With rising prices making everything from apples to sandwich buns to chicken more expensive, the Seminole County school district will hike the cost of cafeteria meals in August, the first such increase in seven years.
The change will not affect Seminole students who qualify for free or reduced-price school meals. About 33,000 youngers, or about 49% of the district’s students, qualify for those programs, according to the Florida Department of Education.
But starting in August, families who pay full price for their children to eat a school breakfast or lunch will pay more than they did prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The price for an elementary school lunch, for example, will go up from $2.50 to $3.25, and the price for a high school breakfast will go from $1.75 to $2.75.
Seminole is the only Central Florida district to approve price hikes so far, with the school board approving the increases at its May 31 meeting. The Osceola County school district said it has not made a decision yet, and the Lake County school district said staff will be discussing its school meal program next week.
The Orange County school district said it does not plan to increase meal prices for the coming year.
Faced with higher prices for food, labor and supplies such as lunch trays and gloves, many school districts are studying whether to charge more for school meals in the 2022-23 school year, experts said.
“It’s being considered nationwide,” said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokeswoman for the School Nutrition Association, which surveyed member school districts and found most face a “perfect storm of challenges” as they plan for the coming school year.
Schools in Missouri, North Carolina, and Tennessee, among others, have announced prices hikes for the 2022-23 school year.
Part of the challenge, PrattHeavner said, is that the federal government, which administers and funds most school meal programs, will end the “pandemic waivers” that allowed districts to serve all students free meals.
Those free meals were affordable because the federal govern
ment paid more than expected, reimbursing most districts about $4.56 per lunch this past year instead of the $3.75 they would have otherwise.
The extra money will stop when those waivers sunset June 30. The end of that extra help coupled with “dramatic price increases for food and supplies” has left many districts unable to keep their operations in the black without charging more in their cafeterias, Pratt-Heavner added.
Supply chain issues are impacting school meals, too. School districts typically order in bulk and far in advance. But now companies cannot always completely fill their orders, she said, and when shorted districts must scramble to find other suppliers and then often end up paying higher prices.
But the basic challenge for school district is the same residents see at the grocery store: Many products now cost more.
In Orange, for example, the cost of the student-favorite “spicy chicken sandwich” is up by 17% and the cost of a meatball sub sandwich increased by 13%, said Lora Gilbert, the district’s senior director for food and nutrition services.
In Seminole, the price it pays for apples, for example, is up 32% in the past five years, the cost of buns is up 26% and the cost of the antibiotic-free chicken it purchases is up 44%, said Richard Miles, the assistant director of Red Apple Dining, the district’s meal program, in an email.
In addition, the school system’s labor costs are up $3.3 million since the 2015, and it expects an additional $1 million in those costs in the coming year, with food prices likely going up another 3% to 8%, according to the dining department.
So Seminole, which offered free meals for the 2021-22 school year, will end that practice in August and then hike the meal prices that had been in effect since the 2015-16 school year.
“Right now even with the increase, we’re still projecting we’ll be operating in the red a little bit,” said Todd Seis, the district’s chief financial officer, meaning district reserve funds might be needed to help keep the meal program running.
“Our goal is not to make a profit off of our students,” Seis added, nor do federal rules allow that, but the program must operate within its budget.
District administrators said families facing economic hardships can apply for the free or reduced-price program, which charges 40 cents a meal, starting in mid July, and they said schools will continue efforts to help struggling families by offering food pantries on many campuses and connecting them to other social services.
Every school system’s budget has its own “unique challenges,” but those with larger numbers of children living in poverty, such as Orange’s, rely less on paying customers to operate their cafeterias and may be weathering the current climate better than those who need full-pay students to keep their meal programs running, Pratt-Heavner said.
“No school board wants to vote to increase meal prices right now,” she added, but some see little alternative. “None of the indicators look good.”
Even with the price hikes, Seminole administrators note that a meal through Red Apple Dining is more affordable than a typical restaurant meal and provides more food.
A kids’ meal at Chikfil-A, for example, is $5.85 for chicken nuggets, a side and a drink, compared with $3.25 for lunch at a Seminole elementary school, which includes an entree, fruit, vegetables and milk.