BSD to discuss increase in student meal prices Monday

The Benton School Board will discuss an increase in price for both students and adults for the upcoming school year during its meeting Monday evening.

According to the supporting documents accompanying the agenda, the purpose of the Paid Lunch Equity is to ensure that schools are charging enough for the paying lunches.

“The expectation is the federal reimbursements for the free/ reduced lunches should not subsidize the paid lunches,” the document said. Therefore, the paying price is a weighted average of your paid meals and should be equal to the free reimbursement rate.”

The documents also say that the Child Nutrition Program is intended to be self-sufficient.

“We are to take our revenues and re-invest in the program,” the attachment reads “This can be achieved by investing in our staff with increased wages, upgrade in equipment, addition of programs which leads to an addition of staff, etc. We have started this process with increased staff wages over the next three years, the purchase of the new (Benton High School) Cafeteria equipment, It/software purchases to increase efficiencies and streamline data, and lots more. But to continue to improve and push forward, we must ensure that the program can sustain being selfsufficient.”

Other items on the agenda include:

• A price change on the Mulbery property.

• Student transfer request.

• A proposed salary schedule stipend for an assistant band director.

• Personnel recommandations. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. in the Chenault Administration Building located at 207 W. Conway. All meetings are open to the public. Social distancing will be practiced and masks are required. As an alternative, the meeting will also be aired live on Facebook.