School lunches can’t outrun the cost of inflation
As a corporate recipe tester, I make about five trips to the market per week and, as such, am forever in tune with average prices.
Thanks to a multitude of reasons, including recordhigh inflation and the war in Ukraine, it’s no surprise food is unbelievably expensive right now and of unreliable quality (when an item is in stock at all). So recently, while I was preparing my kiddo for her first day of school, I found myself wondering this about school cafeteria workers: How are they doing it?
“It’s very, very difficult right now,” said Niki Hutcherson, food service director for the Environmental Charter School in Wilkinsburg. After a chat, I believe her.
In 2020, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued waivers to all schools and districts participating in the National School Lunch Program, allowing them to offer free meals to all students, regardless of household income, for the first time in U.S. history. Those waivers allowed school meal programs to feed children despite the innumerable challenges the pandemic presented. But those waivers expired at the end of June.
It’s hard to overstate the lurch that this leaves school cafeterias in.
Not only are they facing supply chain and inflation issues like the rest of us but also, for the past two school years, all of the meals they provide have been federally subsidized. Without these waivers, their budgets are, essentially, being slashed.
Some of the toughest battles currently facing her team, Hutcherson said, are the more unexpected ones. She’s been able to address the issue of food costs by committing to a set monthly menu. A rotating four-week schedule of meals allows her to purchase in bulk, to buy when the price is right, and to foresee issues with fulfillment far in advance.
“We might still have dayto-day changes,” she said, “but they’re minimal: a swap of an orange for an apple as the fresh-fruit option for the day, for example, or
needing to switch brands of a side item.”
The bigger struggles exist for the things that she can’t control with a reliable menu. Items such as paper products and condiments are nonnegotiable must-haves in a cafeteria setting, but price and availability are currently anything but dependable. There have even been issues with getting necessary equipment, such as a long-delayed beverage cooler.
It all adds up to a pricier lunch, just as we’re seeing at home. Schools, though, cannot simply pass that increase on to parents.
Pricing matters
How much your child pays for a school meal depends on the individual district. All students in Pittsburgh Public Schools and the Northgate School District, for instance, eat for free regardless of their financial standing, because the districts participate in the USDA’s Community Eligibility Provision. In the Mt. Lebanon School District, conversely, lunch costs $2.65 for elementary students and $2.80 for middle school and high school students while
Bethel Park School District students pay $2.75 (elementary), $2.90 (middle) and $3.05 (high school.)
The vast majority of schools in the U.S. participate in NSLP and for good reason: It is the program by which students with limited household income can receive free and reduced lunches. Members of NSLP, however, are permitted to raise lunch prices only 10 cents per year — an amount that, at less than 5% of the average American school lunch price, Hutcherson noted, is hardly comparable to the nearly 40% of school and district food budgets that were covered by the COVID-19 waivers.
Most schools instead opt not to raise prices to maintain accessibility and participation. “Participation is key!” Ms. Hutcherson said, and that’s especially true of students who pay the full price of $2.85 for lunch and 35 cents for milk or juice.
Curtistine Walker, the director of food service for Pittsburgh Public Schools, agrees inflation is putting the squeeze on school cafeterias.
Food costs were rising even during the pandemic, she said, and once schools reopened, the district also had to deal with the fact that some companieshad closed, tasking officials with finding other vendors carrying the same products. “And since they knew that the other companies closed, they were offering them at a higher price.”
Chicken nuggets and tenders, school lunch staples, cost 44.57% more than last year, string cheese is up 24%, fruit juice has risen 33.13% on average, and yogurt cups cost 45.8% more. And that 8-ounce bottle of water? It has skyrocketed 91.67%, Walker noted.
Navigating the unforeseen
The Pennsylvania Department of Education Division of Food and Nutrition has done a good job in providing the information the district has needed to make adjustments in a timely manner, Walker said. In addition, PPS has been able to get better prices on certain items through a good food purchasing policy established by the Pittsburgh Food Policy Council. Buying in bulk through the Pittsburgh Regional Food Service Directors has also helped the district financially.
“The companies can give us a better price because we’re asking for a larger quantity,” Walker said, noting that the district has to be able to provide at least 20,000 servings for every menu item.
So while there have been some significant expenses, “the district has the food it needs and will continue to,” she said.
Hutcherson agreed that, even with higher prices, it’s not all doom and gloom in the cafeterias these days. Her students in particular have responded positively to the 2022-23 rotating menu, which includes new items taking the place of stalwarts that were either prohibitively expensive, unreliably available, or both. A Buffalo chicken wrap got a lot of buzz at the high school level during the second week of school (and my first grader cannot stop talking about the meatball hoagie).
Hutcherson said she tried to look at the challenges she’s faced this year as something of an impetus for positive change. So many of their former practices, protocols, contracts and habits weren’t working in this wacky postpandemic world that “this year has given us the opportunity to embrace a forced reset,” she said. “We’ve streamlined, we’ve evaluated as a team, we’ve really improved our own day-to-day operations wherever we can.”
And at the end of the day, she said, the real measure of success isn’t a dairy contract or the arrival of a beverage cooler: It’s that her students have a reliable meal that they’re excited about.
“I never want the kids to be concerned about eating,” she said.