Overview:
It’s the fifth consecutive year the district has raised school meal prices.
At its last meeting of the school year, the Wake County School Board voted unanimously, but reluctantly, to raise meal prices by $0.25 across the board. Members also agreed to create a task force to look for ways to bring prices back down and feed more students.
When the new school year begins in August, breakfast will cost $2.25 in Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) elementary schools and $2.50 in middle and high schools. Lunch will cost $4 in elementary schools and $4.25 in middle and high schools. This is the fifth consecutive year the district has raised school meal prices due to the rising cost of running the program.
The idea for the task force came from Jeannette Hill, an assistant principal at Apex High School, who delivered a public comment to the board before its vote.
“Another cost increase is going to price even more families out of school meal participation,” Hill said. “Many families in our district make too much to qualify for free meals, but too little to be able to afford another price increase.”
Hill works with the nonprofit School Meals for All NC, which advocates for free, healthy meals for all North Carolina students.
“It is well known that school meals are often more nutritious than meals students bring from home,” Hill told the board Wednesday night. “But what might not be as well known is that school meal participation increases student achievement and attendance and decreases student discipline incidents.”
About 60,000 WCPSS students qualify for free or reduced meals. The district serves about 54,000 lunches per school day, a participation rate of 33%. Only about 21,000 or 13% of students eat breakfast at school, according to a presentation staff shared with the board. The concern from Hill and other advocates is that as meal prices go up, participation drops, which means program revenue also drops, necessitating yet another price increase.
“Our district’s school meal participation rate is approximately half that of the national average,” Hill said. “Another meal price increase is set to shrink our participation rate even further.”
The school meal program is becoming more and more expensive for a handful of reasons beyond low participation. Nutrition staff are getting better retirement, medical, dental, and workers’ compensation benefits next year—a state-level decision that affects the district’s bottom line. Food is also getting more expensive; staff shared that the cost of a slice of pizza has almost doubled in the last decade and the cost of a chicken sandwich has tripled.
WRAL reported earlier this month that in 2016, lunch cost $2 in WCPSS elementary schools and $2.25 in middle and high schools. Meal prices have gone up most years since then.
WCPSS meal prices are higher than in neighboring districts, according to the staff presentation. Durham Public Schools notably began offering free breakfast and lunch to all students in 2024. Back in Wake County, staff estimate it would cost roughly $12 million to offer universal free meals—money the district doesn’t have.
“None of us are happy or want to do this to families,” Board member Lynn Edmonds lamented after the vote to increase prices. “It is very concerning that we’re in this position.”
Board member Sam Hershey said the state and federal governments should step up and fund universal free school meal programs so that public school districts don’t have to keep hiking their prices.
“I can tell you that if we had taxing authority, I would vote to raise taxes to fund this,” Hershey said, “because I believe that students should not have to pay for their food when they are mandated to go to school.”
WCPSS Superintendent Robert P. Taylor said the new task force will have its first meeting in September.
Comment on this story at [email protected].
