School lunch will cost more when students return to classrooms later this month.

By Jake Dye

Special to the Homer Independent Press

The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District’s Board of Education on Monday unanimously approved an increase in cost for meals purchased by students. Meals for elementary schoolers will cost $4, up from $3.60. Meals for middle and high schoolers will now be $5, up from $4. Milk now costs $1, up from $0.80.

The change is necessary, Superintendent Clayton Holland said, because federal pandemic-era funding used to subsidize student nutrition services has been expended, and the program is operating at a deficit.

“It was needed to go up to help offset some costs,” Holland said. “At the same time, not price people out completely, which is what we don’t want.”

A report included in the meeting packet shows that at the end of the fiscal year on June 30, the district had to transfer nearly $100,000 in supplemental funding to student nutrition to reflect “actual” costs. In years before pandemic funding allowed the district to paper over some of the deficit, Holland said large supplemental transfers of more than $1 million were sometimes needed to adequately fund nutrition.

A program has been and remains available for students to get free or reduced-cost meals based on income or other circumstances.

The district previously increased the price of meals for adults in November, bringing lunch from $5.50 to $8.

Per a chart included in the meeting notes, KPBSD meals still cost significantly less than in other large districts in the state. Where local elementary school students pay $4, elementary students in Anchorage pay $6.25.

Monday’s action is one of a few policy revisions being considered for the start of the school year. The board is also considering a suite of policies on the use of generative artificial intelligence in classrooms and this week heard for the first time a policy proposal to implement screen time limits in district schools.