The adult breakfast and lunch meals provided through Great Falls Public Schools are getting a 15 cent price increase this year.

The school board voted unanimously during their Oct. 21 meeting to increase the price of the adult breakfast from $1.85 to $2 and the price of lunch from $3.60 to $3.75.

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 requires that schools annually review the prices charged for meals.

About 500 adult breakfasts and 9,500 adult lunches are served in the district on an annual basis.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides a calculator in which paid lunch prices are compared to the federal reimbursement rates the district receives. The purpose of the assessment is to ensure that the federal revenue is not overly subsidizing the food service program, according to GFPS.

This tool provides guidance to establish paid breakfast and lunch prices for each school year. If the paid breakfast and lunch prices charged by the district are below the amount set by the tool, the district may either increase the paid meal price to the established minimum with an option for a 10 cent maximum increase or supplement the cost of the meals with non-federal funding, according to GFPS.

“The recommended price increases allow the district to avoid supplementing the food service program with non-federal funds. Current student meal prices fall within the
parameters of the tool, so no increase is being recommended for student meals,” according to the GFPS staff report.

Staff recommended increasing the adult meal prices to maintain compliance with federal guidelines. Revenue from the National School Lunch and Breakfast programs cannot be used to subsidize adult meals, according to GFPS.

If the board didn’t approve the increase, the district would have had to supplement the cost of the meals with non-federal funding to cover the difference, which would have been an estimated $855 for the 2019-2020 school year.