Barnegat BOE Meeting Highlights

School lunches will get more expensive in the coming year, thanks to a federal requirement that the district bring the price of its paid lunch up to match the amount the Department of Agriculture spends on each “free” lunch, Board administrator Dean Allison explained at Tuesday night's Barnegat Board of Education meeting.

The cost of a regular paid lunch in Barnegat is lower than the per-lunch subsidy that the Department of Agriculture pays the district, Allison said. The federal government says the disparity amounts to a subsidy of the district’s paid lunch program, and is now requiring schools to increase what they charge for lunches so that it matches free lunch expenditure.

As a result, the cost of all paid lunches will increase by 10 cents. High school and middle-school regular lunches will now cost $2.35, and premium lunches will cost $3.35. Regular elementary school lunches will cost $2.10 and premium lunches $2.35.

For a family paying for a daily regular middle- or high-school lunch, that means paying $18 more over the course of the 180-day school year.

“We’re going to have to continually raise our lunch price, but we’re going to do that on a moderate level,” Allison said. If the district doesn’t up the prices of its lunches, Allison said, the government could penalize it by withholding the $30,000 per month subsidy it pays Barnegat for its lunch program.

“We’re not increasing it because we want to, we’re increasing it because we have to,” he said.

Other news from the meeting:

• Recent graduates Briana Taylor and Brandon Smith presented Barnegat High School principal Dr. Joseph Saxton with the official 9/11 flag in honor of their family members. Taylor lost her uncle and Smith his father in the last year from illness related to the men's service at Ground Zero following the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The flag will now hang in the high school.

• A dozen district employees who retired this year were honored with resolutions and words of appreciation from school principals. The twelve retirees were: Elizabeth Bahr, Eileen Ellis, Linda Garvey, Pam Geoghegan, Jean Hyatt, Linda Michels, Leonard Morano, Michael O’Hearn, Rosanne Rokas, Genevieve Rubenstein, Susan Silver, Virgina Warren.

• Thanks to a gift of $5,000 from the class of 2011, Barnegat High School's long-planned marquee could be a reality by the start of the next school year, said Allison. Fundraising efforts have now nearly pulled in the required $26,000 for the sign, he said, and the district will begin looking into when the project can begin. "I think it's achievable to put it in this summer," Allison said.