Wake school lunch prices are going up again. Here’s how much it will cost students.
Students in Wake County schools will pay 25 cents more for their lunches this fall, continuing a trend of increases that was only halted when meals were free during the pandemic.
The Wake County school board voted 5-4 on Tuesday to raise the cost for a full-price lunch from $3 to $3.25 in elementary schools and from $3.25 to $3.50 cents in middle and high schools. The increases will go into effect for the 2023-24 school year and would cost families more than $40 per year per child.
The price for a full-price breakfast will not go up.
The vote came after board members expressed concerns about how the increase will affect families. Board members asked staff to look at ways in future years to avoid raising prices.
“None of us wants to increase meal prices for families,” said board member Lynn Edmonds.
Edmonds, Sam Hershey, Wing Ng, board chair Lindsay Mahaffey and vice chair Chris Heagarty voted yes. Board members Cheryl Caulfield, Monika Johnson-Hostler, Tyler Swanson and Tara Waters voted no.
“Although a 25-cent increase may not be major to us, to some families it’s the choice between the light bill, the choice between gas,” Swanson said.
Paying cafeteria workers more
Paula De Lucca, senior director for Child Nutrition Services, said they need to raise the lunch prices to help offset higher wages for cafeteria staff, higher food production costs, strict federal regulations and the loss of some federal funding.
“It’s not our first choice to bring a meal price increase forward,” De Lucca told the board. “It’s a forced choice.”
School cafeteria workers are among the lowest-paid employees in the school district, leading to high vacancy rates. The state pays the base salaries for cafeteria workers with Wake supplementing their pay with local money.
In November 2021, some cafeteria workers staged a sickout to protest their work conditions, leading the community to step in to help out with school meals.
Last year, Wake raised the minimum salaries for school support staff, such as cafeteria workers, to $16 an hour. Wake also approved bonuses of up to $1,350 for cafeteria workers.
The higher pay helped lower the vacancy rate for child nutrition staff to 10.55%.
This year’s school budget proposal asks the Wake County Board of Commissioners for enough money to raise the minimum salary for school support staff to $17 an hour.
Increases hurting ‘the little guy’
In the 2015-16 school year, a full-price lunch cost Wake students $2 in elementary schools and $2.25 in middle and high schools. But meal prices have been steadily rising in Wake and in schools across the state and nation.
School nutrition programs are supposed to be financially self-supporting.
“I feel like it’s the little guy who gets the brunt of it,” said Caulfield, a board member.
The price increases were halted when the federal government waived rules to provide free meals to all students in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years during the COVID-19 pandemic. The waiver ended this school year, when Wake again raised meal prices by 25 cents.
Wake is looking at expanding the number of schools participating in the federal (CEP) Community Eligibility Program. All students who attend those schools would be eligible for free meals.
Wake may also look at whether it can fund meal costs for families who barely miss federal income limits to receive a subsidized meal.
Lobbying efforts to persuade either the state or federal government to provide free meals for all students have failed.
“This is always tough and I really wish that somebody would step in and make all the meals free like we had during the pandemic because that was great,” said Mahaffey, the board chair.
The state pays the 40 cents that’s charged to students who qualify for a reduced-price meal. Both the new House and Senate GOP budgets continue covering the reduced-price co-pays.
