East Aurora renews food service contracts for next school year

Chicago Tribune

22-04-2025

On Monday, the East Aurora School District 131 school board approved the renewal of the district's food service provider contracts for next year.
The district uses Whitsons Nutrition, a food service management company based in Islandia, New York, to provide meals for all of its elementary schools and for Cowherd Middle School, according to Monday's meeting agenda. They use Sodexo America in North Bethesda, Maryland, to provide meals for the district's middle schools as well as East Aurora High School.
This is the first renewal of five one-year agreements the district has entered into with the providers, the district's Chief Financial Officer Michael Engel said at Monday's meeting.
All meal prices will be raised by 3%, according to the contract renewal agreements with the two providers. Per a memo from Engel to the district superintendent, increases may not exceed the Consumer Price Index-Food Away from Home rate, which is currently 3.6%.
For example, Whitsons' price for breakfast will increase from $2.42 to $2.49, and lunch will increase from approximately $4 to $4.11, according to the contract. For Sodexo, breakfast will increase from approximately $2.20 to $2.27, and lunch will go from roughly $4.22 to $4.34, as outlined in the contract approved Monday.
The contracts were approved unanimously at the meeting, with board member Bruce Schubert absent. District Superintendent Robert Halverson was also absent Monday.
East Aurora participates in the Community Eligibility Program, according to the district website, a meal-pricing option that's part of the National School Lunch program. The program allows school districts with high poverty levels to serve breakfast and lunch to all students without collecting household applications, according to the USDA.
After paying for the meals, the district is '100% reimbursed by the USDA, by the federal government, for (the) breakfast, lunch, supper and snack program throughout the district,' according to Engel.
The reimbursement rates for the next fiscal year have not yet been released, according to Engel's memo, but the reimbursement rate this past school year for districts with high need was $4.54 for lunch and $2.84 for breakfast, according to the Illinois State Board of Education — meaning next year's rates for both food service companies fall below those rates.
Both contracts note, however, that prices must be quoted 'as if no USDA commodities will be received.'
And, with the possibility of funding cuts to schools by President Donald Trump's administration, the future of some federal funding remains uncertain.
For example, in March, the United States Department of Agriculture said it was ending two pandemic-era programs that provided over $1 billion for schools and food banks to purchase food from local farmers. The Local Food for Schools program represented more than half of that money.
The Illinois State Board of Education had signed an agreement in January to continue the Local Food for Schools program, but is now set to lose that funding after Jan. 31, 2026, the state board said in March.
Later in March, Trump signed an executive order calling for the dismantling of the Department of Education.
But, while the extent to which possible Trump administration cuts to USDA funding for school meals or the Department of Education comes to bear on East Aurora and other school districts remains to be seen, District 131 said they do not anticipate any interruptions to school meal funding for the 2025-26 year, a district spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday.
'There has been some governmental, kind of, changes within (the USDA commodities), that they're sometimes on the table, off the table, but for next year, we're still going forward,' Engel said at Monday's meeting. 'I can't guess or foresee what the U.S. government's going to do in fiscal year (2027) coming up after that, but as of right now we are planning to use the USDA commodities going forward.'