Lunch: Rising Costs, Rising Frustration

Lunch: Rising Costs, Rising Frustration

With a new school year and a new building comes new lunch prices.

Last year, students were able to buy lunch for $2.50. For a student who bought lunch every day, they would be paying $12.50 for a typical five-day week.

This year, the price of school lunch has increased to $2.75. Now a student who bought lunch every single day would be paying a total of $13.75 per week. Buying lunch for a whole month quickly adds up, and many students believe is unfair.

Senior Acacia McDowell said,“I so don’t like it. Unless they are using the money to make the cafeteria bigger then it might be worth it.”

Senior David Green said,“It’s not right. It used to be that ten dollars would get you four lunches and then you could bring in another from home, and you’d be set for the week. Now, it’s higher and those that aren’t on meal plans have to pay extra so the school can try to balance our budget. One quarter at a time at the taxpayer’s expense.”

The underclassmen didn’t have any opinions about the lunch prices. When asked about what they thought, they all had the similar response of “it doesn’t really matter to me”.

Students who are upset about this sudden increase in lunch prices think that it is a result of needing to pay off the debt of the new school costs. According to Mrs. Yuhas, one of the head lunch ladies in the cafeteria, it is the current state of the economy that is to blame about the higher school lunch prices.

Yuhas stated, “The ladies here in the kitchen don’t make the prices. It’s because everything else is going up too. Gas prices and food prices all over are increasing. It has only increased by twenty five cents anyway.”

For now, there isn’t anything that students can do to demand a decrease in price other than to accept the change or start bringing their own lunches from home.