While all students will enjoy free meals again next year in DeKalb County, adults who eat in the cafeteria will see an increase in rates.

School board members approved a measure to increase the price of an adult’s breakfast from $1.25 to $1.50. Lunch for adults will go from $2.50 to $2.75

School Nutrition Supervisor Amy Lattimore recommended the move, saying the cost of the meals was outpacing the old price structure.

“The USDA requires that adult meals including for teachers and staff be paid by them,” Lattimore told the board. “We can’t use federal funding to pay for their meals. We haven’t gone up on the prices for adults in quite a while, but it’s gotten to the point now where meal costs have eclipsed our price point. We just need to go up a little bit. I would like for us to go up by twenty five cents this year for breakfast and twenty five cents for lunch. Next year we may need to look at going up some more. It may be enough or it may not be but it’s really comparable with what other counties around us charge.”

Lattimore said the program allowing students to eat breakfast and lunch for free is rolling right along.

“It is still going really well,” she shared. “We still have a couple more years on that first track that we started. At that point we’ll have to look at it again but for right now it’s going really well. We’re pleased with it.”

The school system began the free lunch program in 2015 under the Community Eligibility Provision. The federal government reimburses the school system using a formula based on the percentage of students participating in the program.