Fed's Regulations Cause School Lunch Prices To Increase

From the Las Vegas Sun:  Families may pay up to an additional $45 per child next year under a school lunch price increase being considered by the Clark County School Board.
The increase is tied to new federal requirements that take effect next year under the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. School districts across the nation are increasing lunch prices to comply with the law.
The law increases the nutritional value requirements of school meals but also prohibits school districts participating in the National School Lunch Program from using federal dollars to subsidize students who don’t receive free or reduced-priced lunches.
The School District’s food purchases are subsidized through the National School Lunch Program, at about $2.51 per school lunch. The new law does not allow school districts to charge less than that — to avoid subsidizing paying students.
The district’s Food Service Department feeds about 162,000 of the district’s 309,000 schoolchildren every day of the school year. The majority of these students qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches, with about 30,000 paying full price for school lunches.
The new law mandates that school districts charging less than $2.51 pay for the balance by dipping into its general fund. The cash-strapped Clark County district doesn’t have the $523,258 needed to bridge the food budget gap caused by the new federal mandates, said Charles Anderson, Food Service director.
“We don’t want to raise school lunch prices,” he said, adding that his department operates under budget. “We’ve tried to keep from raising prices, but that’s the law. We have to follow it.”
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/jun/02/districts-weigh-price-increase-school-lunches/
Yep, so thanks to the Obama administration, kids who buy school lunches have to pay more next school year.
I'm glad our kids bring their lunch from home and I would think more kids ought to be doing that.  Shoot, at $3.00 a meal, they could go to McDonalds and get a kids meal.