CV raising hot lunch prices
After some Central Valley School District board members complained in early May that raising hot lunch prices for the 2008-09 school year by 25 cents seemed too much of a burden for parents, the board voted last week to raise lunch prices by 40 cents. Breakfast will be going up 50 cents.
The change in part lies with an error in computing how much the price increases would save the district. When supervisor of nutrition services Duane Smilden did his first estimate, he calculated that increasing the breakfast prices by 5 cents would save the district $26,700. The newest estimate drops that to $1,500 in savings. Smilden said he accidentally multiplied the cost savings by the full number of meals served, which doesn’t take in account the fixed reimbursement from the state for free- and reduced-price meals.
“I pounded my head on the desk a couple of times” when the error was discovered, Smilden said. “I used total meal counts instead of paid meals. The nickel is only going to affect 68 percent of my meals, because 32 percent is free and reduced. I can’t charge the state a nickel more. I wish I could.”
The new calculations brought the cost savings estimates down sharply. Smilden thought he could save the district $400,000 in part by raising breakfast by 10 cents and lunch by 25 cents. That same savings now requires the higher price increases.
“We all agree it’s a lot,” said board president Tom Dingus. “It’s just that our primary mission is learning and teaching. If you don’t raise prices, you’ll eventually have to cut something else. There’s no pot of money to make it up from.”
Other changes made by the board include increasing the price of milk by 10 cents, increasing the price of a la carte menu items by 10 percent, reducing the elementary school menu cycle from six to five weeks and cutting the number of meal choices at secondary schools from six to four.
The money the district has spent subsiding the nutrition services program has been increasing in recent years. In the 2006-07 school year the district subsidized $293,867 of the costs, a rate of 7.7 percent. For the 2007-08 school year the total is expected to hit just over $561,000, a subsidy of 13.6 percent. That shortfall was expected to increase to $600,000 for the next school year if prices weren’t changed.
The problem has been an increase in food prices and the rapid rise in fuel prices that has forced the district to pay more to transport the food. The state also just announced a cut in the amount of money its pays school districts for each meal served.
The district has had a goal of a 3 percent subsidy, but changed that to 5 percent on a 3-2 vote last week. Board members Anne Long and Cindy McMullen were in favor of setting the subsidy at 7 percent, reducing the price increase to 25 cents for breakfast and lunch, and voted against the measure.
“We thought 3 percent was unrealistic to get to,” Dingus said. The board also decided to revisit the price increase in midyear. “Costs are so volatile, we could all hope for a miracle that it’s going to go down. The price of food can change. The price of fuel can change. It’s just the reality of the situation, with costs going up.”
Smilden said he was surprised both by the vote results and the passionate discussion that preceded it. “I thought they would go with a quarter and re-evaluate in December,” he said. “I’ve never seen them back and forth like this before. They were definitely stating their side of the story.”
“It was a good discussion, like there should be on all issues,” Dingus said.
Increases
School breakfasts will increase from $1.25 to $1.75, a jump of 40 percent. Hot lunches will rise from $2.50 to $2.90, an increase of 16 percent.