Title: School lunch prices on the rise | Education | buffalonews.com
Headings: School lunch prices on the rise
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Content: Students in more than half of the school districts in Erie and Niagara counties will pay more for lunch this year. Five districts, including Grand Island, Holland and Cheektowaga-Sloan, will ask students to pay 25 cents more this year. And some school districts will start the new year trying to figure out how to stop losing money on lunches. “You can’t just keep raising the price,” said Frontier School Board President Patrick Boyle. Frontier Central found out the hard way what happens when you increase prices too quickly. Last year, the cost of lunch for elementary and high school students went up 50 cents to between $2.50 and $2.75 to make up for increasing costs. Sales dropped by 10 percent. The same thing happened across the nation as school lunch prices increased. A Government Accountability Office study found 1.2 million fewer students across the country bought school lunches between the 2010-11 and 2012-13 school years. Federally required lunch-price increases and new nutrition standards likely fueled the change, the study found.