Mount Pleasant students to shoulder brunt of increased school lunch price

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - The cost of lunch and breakfast offered through the Charleston County School District is about to increase for the first time in more than a decade.

On Tuesday, the district’s Nutrition Services Department presented a proposal to the CCSD Audit and Finance Committee to increase lunch to $2.75 and breakfast to $1.50 – an increase of 50 cents and 10 cents, respectively.

However, only students in Mount Pleasant and at Buist Academy, School of the Arts and Academic Magnet will have to pay the new prices. Schools in Charleston, North Charleston and everywhere else in the county will have the same price, but students at those schools will get their meals paid for by the federal government’s Community Eligibility Provision program.

The CEP program allows students in low-income areas to eat for free. This year 22,000 students qualified for the CEP. Now, after a change that allows the state to use Medicaid data to determine low-income areas, more schools have been added. Next year more than 33,000 students will qualify for the CEP.

Walter Campbell, executive director of Nutrition Services, says they were able to apply for the CEP as groups of schools and feeder patterns instead of individual schools that may not have otherwise qualified. However, the schools in Mount Pleasant did not have enough areas with low-income students to meet the threshold to be eligible for CEP.

Campbell says that without the expansion of the CEP, the price increase likely would have needed to be higher to keep up with inflation.

“If you look at the consumer price index since the start of the pandemic in the food area, it has risen 23 percent,” Campbell said. “We don’t see ourselves coming back in the next three years because we are going to put other things in place to strategically keep things balanced.”

The 50-cent increase for lunch would bring the department an additional $437,000 in additional income. Campbell says his staff works hard to cut costs and work as efficiently as possible.

“Nationwide, 16 to 18 meals per labor hour is the norm. We run about 21 meals per labor hour because our folks are efficient. It helps us keep a balanced budget,” Campbell said.

Individual students in Mount Pleasant and the other schools affected by the price increase would still have the opportunity to apply for free and reduced meals. Campbell says his team has an extensive outreach effort every year to help families apply for that program.

The price increase proposal still needs to be approved by the full school board but if it is approved the price change would go into effect next school year.

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