Rising gas and food costs have some Baltimore-area school systems bumping up the price of school meals.
In Carroll, food service officials and Superintendent Charles Ecker want to increase the cost of middle- and high-school breakfasts next year from $1 to $1.50, because of the impact of higher gas prices on trucks delivering food and the cost of milk having shot up 26 percent in a year.
The school board was expected to vote on the proposal Tuesday afternoon.
“That?s a pretty substantial increase,” said Eulalia Muschik, Carroll?s supervisor of food services.
With the school board?s approval, Carroll?s breakfast prices will be closer to other counties.
Currently, Carroll charges less for school meals than most other counties.
Howard has been forced to increase the cost of its meals for the past two years. Breakfast in a Carroll school could rise to the cost of a breakfast in Howard.
Anne Arundel has not increased its prices in the past few years, but Harford has done so due to rising gas and dairy prices.
The combination of skyrocketing prices at that time has created a “kind of perfect storm,” said Gary Childressm Harford?s schools food services supervisor.
Muschik said Carroll was paying each delivery truck driver an $8.50 fee for gas at the start of this school year; it now pays $14.
But the county still would not make enough revenue with the meal increases for its food service budget to break even.
It will fall $225,000 short of its $7.2 million expenditures.
Officials wanted to raise the prices even more but resisted so that meals would not be too expensive for students to buy on a regular basis.
The Carroll school board was expected to vote on the proposal Tuesday afternoon.
