For Corridor school meals, ‘fresh is more expensive’

CEDAR RAPIDS — Meal prices in several Corridor school districts will increase slightly next school year due to federal nutrition guidelines, district officials said Monday.

The nutrition rules — part of the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act — have been phased in over the past few years.

Schools now are required to serve whole-grain bread, pasta and rice, as well as low-sodium food and specific amounts of fruits and vegetables.

No new guidelines are set for next school year, Diane Fulton, a schools program team leader with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service in Denver, Colo., said during a phone interview.

But increased food costs overall, paired with a cost equity provision in the 2010 law, mean families in Corridor schools will have to pay a little more next year for school breakfast or lunch.

The Paid Meal Equity provision of the act is designed to prevent school districts from artificially lowering the cost of paid meals and using federal reimbursement money for free or reduced-price meals to make up the difference, Fulton said.

It requires schools to bring their prices for paid meals closer to $2.70 for the 2015-16 school year, a figure based in part on the federal reimbursement rate for free meals.

In addition, the actual costs of the foods schools are required to serve also have risen, partially due to the ongoing drought in California, USDA spokesman Devin Koontz said by phone.

'Fresh is more expensive,' Koontz said.

In the Cedar Rapids Community School District, prices for breakfast and lunch will increase by 10 cents next year:

l Breakfast will be $1.60 at the elementary level and $1.70 in middle and high schools.

l Lunch will cost $2.50 for elementary students and $2.60 for middle- and high-school students.

That amounts to an increase of about $36 annually for a student eating breakfast and lunch at school every day, according to a report to the Cedar Rapids school board on the price increase. Meal prices for students who come from low-income families and receive a reduced price will not change.

The increases in Cedar Rapids roughly match price changes in other Corridor districts. Breakfast and lunch prices will go up 5 cents next year in Iowa City, for example.

Lunch prices will increase by 10 cents in the Clear Creek-Amana and College Community districts, and students in Clear Creek-Amana and Solon schools will have to pay 5 cents and 20 cents more, respectively, for breakfast.

Marion Independent School District Superintendent Sarah Pinion said her district also anticipated increased prices but has not yet released specific amounts.

Other factors also can affect meal prices, nutrition officials said.

For example, students in Cedar Rapids are now required to have a fruit or vegetable on their meal tray before they finish going through the cafeteria line. And that has impacted costs for the district, said Suzy Ketelsen, the district's food and nutrition manager.

'I would say there's wasted food,' Ketelsen said. 'It's just a natural thing when you force students to take something — they're not always going to consume it.'

In Solon schools, students don't have to take fruit, said Ginny Scott, the Solon Community School District's nutrition director. But if they don't, all other items on their tray will be charged separately, possibly increasing the cost of the meal.

'A lot of them, they want the all-inclusive meal price, but they don't want to eat the fruit,' Scott said of Solon students. 'So they'll take the fruit and immediately throw it away.'

Scott said Solon schools allow students to place unwanted fruit in a basket to be donated to a food pantry instead of trashing it.

Manufacturers that provide the food to districts also have been adjusting to the nutrition guidelines, and that means the some of the foods schools need aren't always in wide supply, Fulton and Ketelsen noted.

'When there are more school districts offering it,' Ketelsen said, 'availability becomes an issue.'

To help keep costs down, districts can partner to increase their purchasing power, Koontz said.

The Cedar Rapids district has done just that with the Dubuque and Linn-Mar districts, among others, for the past four years, Ketelsen said. She said the district also has worked with the College Community, Linn-Mar and Marion districts to purchase milk and bread for the past 15 years.

l Comments: (319) 398-8204; andrew.phillips@thegazette.com