You're paying more for your kids' meals if they attend public school in Sarasota County. In August, the district decided on a 20% price hike, citing higher food and labor costs.
Tom Edwards is a moderate among conservatives on the five-member school board. He explains why he voted with the rest of the members to raise the cost of school breakfast and lunch.
This decision seemed to happen fast. There was a school board workshop in mid-July, and then the unanimous vote in early August. Why do this?
When you get a recommendation from the superintendent about how to move forward on a particular agenda item such as the school lunches, you're relying on their expertise, their deep dives, their research. Which we had done, and they had done a very thorough examination.
So basically the superintendent came to you and said these prices have to go up, and you agreed?
The way that the school district works is that in their hearts and in our wallets, we really would love to be able to give free or reduced lunch to everyone. And we did do that, and we did manage the costs for years. People weren't paying attention until we had to raise the price. And of course, that got everyone upset, justifiably so.
One thing the school officials explained is that the meal program operates as its own separate business and has to bring in the money to cover its costs. But many people who spoke against the rise in prices at the school board meeting earlier this month asked about federal programs, like CEP — Community Eligibility Provision — which recently lowered its threshold for participation, and that could make lunch free for a lot more kids. Does Sarasota qualify for that?
As explained to me from the superintendent, we do qualify for the CEP program, but CEP only pays for 65% of the food delivered, so the other 35% comes from somewhere, whether it's philanthropy or costs, you know, and we're already below the 35% in what we're charging. And if we were to absorb all of the 35%, it would be between $5-$8 million that would come out of the general fund.
But you HAVE borrowed from the general fund in the past to pay for school lunches. Why isn't that possible now?
If you remember with the general fund, we have a policy that says we can't go below 7% and we were already at 7.75%. When I first arrived as a school board member (in 2020), the general fund at that time was somewhere around 18% above. We — the school district — gave the school lunch program $5 million to make it flush. We had to do that for the 2020 school year. And then we did it again for the 2021 school year, and then from then on, that's when the federal ESSER dollars kicked in.
And now that pandemic-era funding from the federal government is going away. Why is the district that close to the edge on reserves? Is it possible to trace the money outlays that brought it to this point?
Yes, Ma'am. A combination of a year-over-year 20% increase on our health care that we give to teachers, our insurance for hurricanes and those kinds of things have gone through the roof, energy, gasoline, just like every household in Florida.
What do you say to critics who say you wasted money on things like getting rid of a perfectly good superintendent or paying so much in legal fees when you could have spent that money on children?
I would say you're right, because that's one of the arguments that I had about firing a superintendent or redistricting that we didn't have to do. I would say yes, those were frivolous dollars.
We learned recently that the state of Florida opted out of federal summer food aid for the second year in a row. Has Florida or the DeSantis administration turned DOWN any federal aid that schools might have qualified for in the school year?
To my knowledge, that is not true.
So you mentioned you are pursuing some creative approaches to paying for school lunches. What are you thinking of?
I am not prepared to put my cards on the table yet. I think people know that I'm an entrepreneur by trade. I think out of the box, I've put the word out. I need your help, and people are knocking on the doors and we're in conversation. That's the best I can tell you at this point.
This conversation has been lightly edited for content and clarity.
