news-record.com

RALEIGH -- North Carolina needs to put $20 million into public school lunch programs or risk backtracking on healthier nutrition standards the General Assembly passed in 2005.

"We're breeding problems," said Rep. Doug Young, a Scotland County Democrat who sits on the House Appropriations Committee. He said that feeding children healthier food when they're younger will avoid health costs on down the line.

The General Assembly wrote healthier school lunch standards into law three years ago, but provided no money to help fund the increased costs associated with providing healthier food. Combined with rising food, employee and fuel costs, the new standards are putting pressure on school lunch programs across the state. Of the 115 school lunch programs in the state, 87 are losing money and the rest are likely to fall into the red soon.

Guilford County's school nutrition program has a budget of $26 million but is "somewhere under $1 million" in the red, said Cynthia Sevier, director of child nutrition for the system. When school lunch programs came to the General Assembly last year, they asked for $15 million but were rejected.

This year, state budget writers say tax dollars are even tighter. "We're about to be in severe trouble," Sevier said. "We're going to have to depend on the district to help us out."

The school nutrition program is part of the school system but uses revenues from lunch sales and federal grants to run the program. North Carolina is one of only a handful of states that does not fund school lunch programs with state tax dollars.