Title: School lunch prices on the rise | Education | buffalonews.com
Headings: School lunch prices on the rise
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School lunch prices on the rise
Increasing costs
Closing the gap

Content: But some school districts have found they need to ask families to pay even more than the federally mandated increases to make up for rising costs. “We can’t run in a deficit,” said Mary Brucz, food service director at Cheektowaga-Sloan, where the price of an elementary school lunch will increase 17 percent to $1.65 this year. “ So we had to come to a cost that wasn’t going to hurt our families but could still keep us afloat.” Increasing costs
Several factors affect the increased cafeteria expenses. Food prices are up. The healthier lunches that school districts now serve cost more, and the price of health insurance and other employee benefits continue to rise. All that has happened at a time when fewer students are buying lunch and enrollment in most schools has declined. In Frontier, for example, the district calculates it spent $5.48 for every school meal sold last school year. But it took in only $4.79 per meal – including lunch and snack sales, as well as state and federal reimbursements and the value of surplus food the government supplies. The increasing costs of milk and other foods have squeezed the Frontier lunch budget, but there’s another factor that has driven up expenses even more.