Wallingford schools rolling back prices of premium lunches

As published in the Record Journal Monday December 10, 2012

By Russell Blair Record-Journal staff
rblair@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2225
Twitter:@RussellBlairRJ

WALLINGFORD — Students who purchase premium school lunches, such as meatball subs, will soon have some extra cash in their pockets.

On Monday, the Board of Education Operations Committee unanimously approved reducing the cost of such lunches to $2.35 at the high school and $2.25 at the middle school, the same price as regular lunches. Premium meals previously cost $3.75. The changes are expected to start next month.

Food Service Director Sharlene Wong said the school board approved increasing the prices of more popular lunch items this year to tackle a growing deficit in the cafeterias account. But due to new federal healthy food guidelines, portion sizes have been dramatically reduced, so students were paying more for less, and purchases dropped substantially.

“The kids got double-whammied,” said School Superintendent Salvatore Menzo.

According to Wong, the number of meatball subs sold per month last school year was 2,339, compared with 814 this year, when the subs were roughly halved in size. Hotdog sales also took a nosedive, which Wong attributed to smaller, healthier, low-sodium hot dogs. In total, the cafeterias are selling 4,263 fewer premium lunch items a month.

“The fact that we’ve had to reduce the portion sizes of those meals and increased those prices ... we find that we are not serving as many paid students because of that,” Wong said.

Wong said she believed the new, lower prices would boost sales.

“We think what will happen then is the reduction in paid lunches that we’re seeing, we’ll see that go back up again,” she said.

Board of Education Chairwoman Roxane McKay, who has a son at Lyman Hall High School, said the changes to lunch, and the fact that schools were charging more for less food, were among the concerns she heard from students.

Wong said tiered lunches and higher prices for popular items have worked in other school districts.

“It just wasn’t a good year to try it because of the (nutritional) changes,” she said.

Board of Education member Kathy Castelli, part of a subcommittee that investigated the cafeteria deficits, said the price increases were made without knowledge of the new federal rules regarding school lunches.

“We thought we could get in a more profitable mode by taking these five premium lunches the kids really seemed to go for and adding a buck to those,” she said. “At that time we didn’t know the federal government was going to mandate we only serve 50 percent.”

Board of Education member Christine Mansfield said the price reduction seemed drastic, but Wong said the lunches would still be profitable. Though the sale prices are lower, the reduced portions mean the cost to produce the lunches has decreased.