School Lunch Prices Up $1.25 a Week in 2012-13

With school just a week and a half away, parents whose children purchase school lunch should be prepared to pony up a little more money this year.

Earlier this summer, the school board approved a 25 cent across the board increase to school lunches as part of keeping in line with the Healthy Free Kids Act of 2010.

This means that students at all schools will pay an additional $1.25 a week to purchase lunch at school five-days-a-week.

For students at the elementary schools, lunches this year will cost $2.50 instead of $2.25 and students at the middle and high schools will pay $2.75 instead of $2.50.

School district Business Administrator Matt Shevenell told the board that the town needs to align its school lunch prices to match the federal free reimbursement.

School District Food Services Director David Dziki told the board at a meeting in June that school lunch prices in Merrimack average $2.39 per meal and need to average at least $2.51 to be on target.

Shevenell said three options were presented to the school board:

• to increase prices by 25 cents across the board
• to increase prices by 25 cents at the James Mastricola Upper Elementary School, Merrimack Middle School and Merrimack High School,
• or to increase prices by 25 cents just at JMUES and the high school.

Option A, the across the board increase that Dziki and the administration recommended to the school board as the best option actually brings lunch prices well over $2.51 to an average of $2.64, for good reason, Shevenell said.

“It's something we could probably maintain for a number of years before changing it again,” Shevenell told the school board.

Option B would bring prices to $2.57 and Option C just over $2.51, which would mean another price bump the following year.

“We would definitely come back the following year looking for a price increase with Option C,” Shevenell said.

School Board member Shannon Barnes, who made the motion to approve the Option A price bump, spoke in favor of doing for a couple of reasons.

“The other options put responsibility on grades 5-12 and not 1-4, so it's not equitably making every student responsible, so your burdening one group over another for three years,” Barnes said.

But more importantly, she said, the school district runs the Food Services department as a self-sustaining one and with some more than 50-year-old coolers in some buildings, their useful life could be coming to an end, she said.

Having a surplus to support the funding of replacement equipment is important, she said, adding that it doesn't makes sense to limit surplus and end up putting equipment replacement expenses into the operating budget.

“That's not how we want this department to work, historically,” Barnes said.

School Board member George Markwell suggested it would be better, with the potential for new country leadership come November to act only on a year of lunch price changes and revisit it later, in the case that the federal regulations could change.

But as School Board Chairman Chris Ortega pointed out, if regulations change and they could go back and offer a price reduction, there's nothing binding them to this price increase and the school board “could and should” reduce the prices back down.

School Board member Andy Schneider said he understood where Markwell was coming from, but that it often takes time for change and if leadership in Washington changes this year, it could still be two or three years for other changes to trickle down.

“I'm more in a position to support Option A than I was a week ago,” Schneider said, after studying the options and hearing the arguments.

The board voted 4-1 to approve the across the board lunch increase with Markwell in opposition.