New Federal School-Meals Rules Could Lead to Rising Lunch Prices

More than 80 percent of the students in Leah Schmidt’s school district on the southeast side of Kansas City, Mo., live in poverty. Among the others, many students come from families whose household income is just a few hundred dollars too high for them to qualify for federally subsidized free or reduced-price lunches.

But Ms. Schmidt, the director of nutrition services in the Hickman Mills C-1 district, raised the price of a school lunch this year by a dime to comply with new U.S. Department of Agriculture rules about meal prices . The rules, created under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act passed in 2010, are intended to help keep the federal contribution for free and reduced-price meals from subsidizing lunches and breakfasts eaten by students from families well off enough to pay full price.