As school reopened this week after winter vacation, children at the Hildreth Elementary School needed to bring an extra 50 cents each day for lunch at the school cafeteria. According to a Dec. 20 email from Food Services manager Paul Correnty, the price for a hot lunch increased from $2 to $2.50, effective Jan. 3. Student lunch prices at the Bromfield School are unchanged.

Asked for comment, interim school Superintendent Joe Connelly told the Press the school lunch program was projected to run a deficit of about $57,000 by the end of the academic year, instead of its usual surplus. While higher food prices accounted for part of the shortfall, Connelly said, capital expenses were also a major factor.

One major capital expense, Correnty explained in a phone interview with the Press, was a commercial six-burner gas stove for the elementary school kitchen, acquired in September. The kitchen had been operating with an electric residential stove that had only two working burners, according to Correnty. Installation of the commercial stove proved more expensive than expected, requiring a new gas line and a fire suppression system that met legal requirements, he said.

Correnty said his goal was to bring the food at the elementary school up to the same standard as the meals at the Bromfield School. He cited requests from elementary-school parents for better food quality and more vegetarian options.

"How you learn to eat from a young age can determine whether you are healthy later. We educate children about food," Correnty said. "But I bit off a little more than I could chew financially."

According to finance director Lorraine Leonard, the total cost for the stove and its installation was about $15,000. A second capital cost, she said, is a point-of-sale payment system that will allow students to use a swipe card to buy their lunches. That system is currently under contract and has been partly paid for, but the final purchase has been deferred until next summer to save monthly fees and training expenses, Leonard explained.

To address the deficit, Superintendent Connelly has proposed a range of measures that will be discussed at the Jan. 9 meeting of the School Committee. The price increase at the elementary school is expected to cut the deficit by about $10,000. Deferring the point-of-sale system will save another $20,000. Additional savings are expected from an increase in the price of faculty lunches, a reduction in food service staff hours, and an expected state reimbursement of the costs incurred for meals prepared at the school while it served as a shelter after the October snowstorm.

Both Leonard and Connelly said that the elementary school lunch price had been among the lowest in the area, and that the new price is comparable to neighboring towns. According to Connelly, the lunch price at the elementary school had not been increased for seven years.

Asked if the higher price might lead fewer students to buy lunch, Connelly said he did not expect a decline in sales because "the quality of Chef Paul's lunches is so renowned."

In recent years, Leonard noted, the school food service has usually returned about $10,000 to the town, over and above its costs. By contrast, she said, most towns have to subsidize their school lunch programs.

Leonard, too, attributed the success of Harvard's lunch program to the high quality of Correnty's meals. Citing his regular purchase of fresh fish, she said, "Chef Paul would die before he put a fish stick on a kid's plate!"