St. Charles School Board set to raise prices on school lunches

ST. CHARLES – St. Charles School District 303 students and faculty may have to spend more on school lunches next year.

At Monday night’s school board Business Services Committee meeting, the board was presented with a recommendation to increase the price of school lunches for the 2023-2024 school year.

Assistant Superintendent for Business Services Justin Attaway said at the meeting that the price increase was necessary for the school lunch program.

He said food costs have been rising an average of 9% annually for the past three years.

Board member Becky McCabe asked if it would be possible to raise the price of adult lunches to keep from raising the prices for students.

Attaway said staff had already looked into that as an option, but because less than 1% of cafeteria sales come from adults, it would not be feasible to offset the costs with adult lunches.

“We don’t like bringing price increases, because we know that this filters through families,” Attaway said. “So this is not my favorite agenda item to bring forward.”

Attaway said he did not think it was likely that prices would reduce in coming years, but said they won’t know until they go out to bid next year and see competing prices from other vendors.

The item will come back before the school board for consideration and a possible vote at the next meeting on May 8.

If the recommended new prices are approved, high school lunches would see the biggest increase, which Attaway said was because they are run by a separate program.

Quest Food Management Services provides the lunches for D303 high schools.

Through the high school lunch program, Quest covers all costs, supplies the food and collects all the profits, then pays the district a 7.5% commission on sales.

The food service vendor for the elementary and middle schools is Organic Life.

The district also provides free or reduced priced lunches to K-8 students in low income households, through the child nutrition program, run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.