Title: Food Prices Eat Up School Lunch - TIME
Headings: Food Prices Eat Up School Lunch
Food Prices Eat Up School Lunch
Content: Food Prices Eat Up School Lunch - TIME
Food Prices Eat Up School Lunch
By        Kathleen Kingsbury Friday, July 11, 2008
Tom Grill / Corbis
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Students at about three-quarters of American schools can expect to find higher prices in their cafeterias when they return this fall, according to a recent survey by the School Nutrition Association. The reason? Skyrocketing costs for nearly every basic food item schools rely on for meals — including a 17% increase in the price of milk and bread since last year. " You can only stretch the food dollar so far," the association's president-elect, Katie Wilson, told members of the House Education and Labor Committee Wednesday. " We simply don't have the funds to continue on with this." U.S. schools served about 5 billion lunches last year with an average price tag of $2.58 per meal. That cost will likely jump $0.30 — or 12% — per meal in the coming year, SNA estimates, or about $1.5 billion nationwide. Most schools already lose money on free or reduced-price lunch and breakfast programs; nearly 18 million students qualify for these meals, which are subsidized by the federal government, but at a rate far below the actual cost of providing the food. To make ends meet, nearly 70% of schools told SNA that they would have to dip into "rainy day" funds, financial reserves that usually go to capital improvements.