SNS budget outlook worsens

Before this year's California budget crisis, efforts to reform SFUSD's food service were limited by low federal reimbursement rates and inadequate budgets. Now the SNS faces a double whammy with the overall district budget deficit forcing belt tightening everywhere coupled with dramatic increases in food prices. Expect to hear a lot more about this issue. This could be painful. From CNN:

School kids feel the bite of high food prices
Administrators are cutting corners and considering lay-offs to make up for the price spike in milk, eggs and flour.
By Aaron Smith, CNNMoney.com staff writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Rising food prices are making it harder for schools to cook up ways to give kids the nutrition they need.

Right now, they're taking shortcuts and shuffling ingredients to make up the difference, but that's only a short-term solution with long-term consequences on the horizon.[...]

Food-price pain is especially sharp in California, which has some of the nation's strictest nutrition rules. "With all the food requirements we have [here], it's doubly difficult this year. There isn't enough money to go around," said Lynnelle Grumbles, food service director at Visalia Unified School District in central California.

Balancing school lunch with possible lay-offs
"The parents expect more fresh vegetables, but we're having to make a choice not to," Grumbles said. The only other solutions would be to lay off workers, charge parents more per plate, or convince Congress to increase its annual reimbursement rate, she said.

"If the general public expects school programs to provide quality food for their kids, then the reimbursement rates need to increase," she said. "The increase over the next two years needs to double, in order to survive."

Federal reimbursement programs cover all or part of school districts' lunch tabs. Congress lifts reimbursement rates every year, but Gasiorowski said it hasn't been enough: "We need to be looking at an increase of 12% to 15%, instead of our usual annual increase of 2 or 3%."