LIHU’E — Public-school lunches are expected to remain 75 cents apiece when the 2000-01 school year begins next month. The state Legislature passed, and Gov. Ben Cayetano signed into law, a bill mandating school lunches be priced at up to
LIHU’E — Public-school lunches are expected to remain 75 cents apiece when the
2000-01 school year begins next month.
The state Legislature passed, and
Gov. Ben Cayetano signed into law, a bill mandating school lunches be priced at
up to one-third the cost to produce each lunch. But that law doesn’t take
effect until July of next year.
Even if the new law was in effect already,
an increase in the price of school lunches would probably not be considered
this school year “because we would want to give people ample warning, I guess,
that the price were going up,” said Greg Knudsen, state Department of Education
communications director.
“We probably wouldn’t be increasing prices
immediately — at least that doesn’t seem to be in the works — but there’s
still the possibility,” he said.
It costs the state Department of Education
School Food Services Program between $2.68 and $2.70 to prepare each lunch,
Knudsen said. At that cost, school lunches would be $1 next year. The law
allows one third of the cost to be rounded to the nearest 25 cents. Ironically,
the new law amended an existing law allowing DOE to charge up to $1 per
lunch.
The DOE by rule will still provide reduced-price or free lunches to
children from lower-income families.
The cost of a school lunch has been 75
cents since the early 1990s, and was 45 cents before that.
The DOE pushed
the legislation to use the percentage formula to set lunch prices, which, if
cost savings occurred, could result in a lowering of the cost of lunch, Knudsen
said.
“The formula actually suggests that the price could go either up or
down, depending on what kind of cost savings might be realized in the future,”
he said.
“There are things that we don’t really know about, so there could
be a way of even, conceivably, keeping the price at 75 cents. Or if it goes up
to a dollar, perhaps at some point it would even be lowered again, just
depending on what factors enter into it, if it is set by formula,” Knudsen
continued.
There may not be a mandate for public hearings or full state
Board of Education approval for changes in the cost of a school lunch, Knudsen
said. It may be an administrative decision Superintendent Dr. Paul LeMahieu can
make, he added.
But the matter is the subject of more examination and
discussion, he concluded.
Staff writer Paul Curtis can be reached at
245-3681 ext. 224 or pcurtis@pulitzer.net
