With food prices escalating sharply and fuel costs increasing delivery expense school lunch programs throughout Massachusetts are suffering deficits and being forced to raise prices. The Boston Globe featured this issue today amid problems in communities everywhere. From the Globe:

The rising cost of grain, milk, and vegetables is expected to drive up school lunch prices this fall for tens of thousands of students, causing even further financial hardships for already-strapped public school systems across Massachusetts, education officials said.

School systems, in addition to increasing prices, are employing cost controls that may change some menus for the worse.

They also are concerned that cafeterias could be forced to scale back menus, possibly cutting healthier items because they cost more. Dedham, for example, may stop serving fresh-fruit cups.

And systems are trying to place more students into the federally funded free or reduced price lunch program, but those programs don’t cover all students. And with some prices increasing it is possible that some federally ineligible students may begin to skip lunch.

School leaders across the state are concerned that the higher prices could prompt some students from working-class families who don’t qualify for federally subsidized meals to skip lunch.

The cost increases in food commodities have been staggering.

Meat costs have risen by 11 percent over this past school year, fruits and vegetables by 13 percent, bread by 17 percent, and milk by 19 percent, according to preliminary results of a meal cost survey conducted this summer by the national School Nutrition Association.

Real problems continue to mount financially on localities, and those problems, contrary to what some in the legislature say, continue to have adverse impacts on our people.

Read the Globe story here.