USC Raises School Lunch Prices

On one hand, it’s still a bargain.

On the other … hey, when does the price of anything go down anymore?

School breakfast and lunch prices will rise with the start of the academic year after the Upper St. Clair School board unanimously approved the increases Monday.

Breakfast each day is a dime more, and lunch, 20 cents. The new price schedule:

• Elementary breakfast, $1.20
• Secondary breakfast, $1.30
• Elementary lunch, $2.05
• Secondary lunch, $2.30

Frosina Cordisco, district director of business and finance, said the federal government's new standards for school meals are contributing to the need for price increases.

 “The key reason is, obviously, the cost of the food, how we have to make these changes it terms of portion size,” she told the board.

Also, because most of the food-service employees are district employees, the financial ramifications of the Public School Employees' Retirement System are coming into play, Cordisco said.

“Keep in mind that the food service is what we call an enterprise,” she explained. “It is a true profit-and-loss center.”

The new prices will be in line with what other school districts charge, according to figures she presented to the board.

Megan Adamo, the new student board representative attending her first meeting, said her fellow students generally are satisfied with the meals.

 “If they don’t know what to get,” she told the board, “it’s because there are too many options.”